


aim me up at the sky

by Hannah



Series: Set Off Like Geese [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, California, Disability, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-07 20:58:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 24,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18881140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hannah/pseuds/Hannah
Summary: Maybe she should’ve told Buffy where she was going. Maybe she should’ve told her friends she was coming. Maybe she should’ve done a lot of things. But she hadn’t, so here she was, on her way to try to get some help in working out her grief. Sunnydale in summer – dry, hot, quiet, empty – seemed like a good place to start.





	1. harden my heart, got to leave you today

Dawn took the long way back. Past the old shuttered house that Janice said she’d once peeked inside and saw nothing but junk, down the alley where persimmons grew over the fence in winter. It felt good to be in Sunnydale again – a weird kind of good was still good. She almost stopped paying attention, but then she got to Covell and realized where her feet were taking her.

“Not that way,” she whispered, and turned around to walk back to Fifth so she could head out along D Street.

Usually when she’d come back to town for whatever reason, there’d been someone to pick her up at the train station. A couple of times she and Buffy walked back home by themselves. Now it was just her, and it felt – not bad, not wrong, just slow to be walking this much and this far. She knew Sunnydale, but she knew it from a bike. By foot, everything seemed at least twice as far away as it should have been. But it wasn’t like she was in a hurry. She’d come from somewhere else already. Going to where she was headed, she could take her time.

The sun was high and bright, like it always was in Sunnydale’s summertime. In most of southern California, really, but most places hadn’t specifically named themselves after it. Everything was saturated with the kind of sunshine people tried to sell tourists on as being something worth traveling to see, but it was just what she’d grown up with.

When she got where she was going, it was starting to get into late afternoon and the shadows were slowly sliding out long. The route she’d followed took her past the empty lot nobody’d built up yet, through the parking lot and by the laundry room, around the bikes locked safe behind the gate, up the stairs and finally down the walkway to the corner apartment.

And of course they weren’t home.

She rang the doorbell a second time just so she’d be completely sure. Then she let herself laugh and wipe away a couple of tears, because of course they weren’t home. It’d been silly to think someone would’ve come to the door right away. It was a Thursday afternoon when most adults were out at their jobs, and she wasn’t in a chapter book running-away story. Reality didn’t like that kind of neatness. Reality didn’t much care about what was or wasn’t convenient to anyone’s own life story. But she’d come prepared to wait, so she slid down to sit on the concrete walkway with her back to the wall and pulled _The Lord of the Rings_ from her backpack. She’d wanted something to keep her busy on long waits, and with the first movie coming out soon, she figured it’d be a good time to get to the series. Even so, she took the words in slowly, trying to stretch out the time, as Gandalf explained to Frodo exactly what it was that he’d inherited.

“Looks like someone’s expecting us, ducks.”

Dawn startled and looked up. Spike smiled down at her and Drusilla just shook her head. They were wearing their work uniforms, matching janitor’s monkey suits with their paycheck names stitched onto the front. 

“I expect you want to come inside,” Dru said. “You’ve still got your standing invitation, but for the sake of the ritual, I’ll offer it again. I welcome you to our home. All right, let’s hurry along, now.” Dawn scrambled to her feet and grabbed her stuff as Dru unlocked the door. “What kind of tea would you like?”

“What kinds are there?” One of the benefits of being friends with crazy people was that if she showed up at their door, they just rolled with it, and one of the benefits of being friends with British people was that tea was basically an automatic offer every time you came over. Crazy British people were the best of all: tea got offered with no questions asked other than what kind she wanted. Dawn dropped down on the couch and looked around, trying to take in the differences since she’d last been there. A couple times for tea and snacks after they’d moved in maybe two years ago, and – it didn’t seem right that maybe two years was it, but that _was_ it. It’d always been them coming over to her house way more often than her going to theirs. Buffy did a few times, but – well, that was Buffy. 

Dawn hadn’t thought about it much. She’d been thinking about other things, like how grateful everyone was that they were around to help out before Mom’s remission. And right after the dying.

“The usual. Blacks, greens, herbs, a white that’s very nice. We’ve also a fine jasmine blend. Any type you’re already after?”

“Just something without caffeine.” Their place still looked pretty much the same on the surface. The couch was the one they’d bought off those grad students, the art Mom gave them was still on the walls. It was more lived-in around the edges. Like how the bookshelves were almost full instead of almost empty and how there was a kettle plugged in on the counter.

“Lavender, then. I’ll make us all a pot.”

“Thanks.” She squirmed deeper into the couch cushions and pressed her hands between her knees. Spike joined her, already back in his regular day clothes: black on black with a little black for color, with a heavy silver necklace peeking out through the shirt collar. He sat on the other side of the couch, throwing one arm over the back.

“I expect you’ve got your reasons for showing up at our door. No phone calls, no postcards – not that you’re not a nice surprise, more you’ve got us wondering what’s brought you here after so much time away.” 

“Be a shame if there wasn’t anything compelling you to make the journey.” Dru leaned forward against the countertop island, bracing herself on her hands. “You’ll not receive any punishment from us. But I’ll be disappointed if what brought you here was ill-intentioned. Or worse, if it wasn’t anything at all.”

“It wasn’t nothing,” Dawn said. She knew an answer like _the train got me here_ wouldn’t go over well right now. “I just wanted to get away from everything. Take a break from my life. I figured, you’d let me at least spend a night back home.”

“You figured nicely, then,” Spike said. “And what else?”

“What do you mean, what else? I can’t want to just stop for a while?”

“Not with your family history.”

“Look, I’m not Buffy, okay? Don’t think I am, don’t expect me to go there, you don’t need to lock up your sleeping pills or anything, when I say get away from everything for a while, I mean it like just what it is. I needed a break from how everyone’s just sliding around, from how Dad’s pushing me to be done with it already. Buffy’s trying to go through it fine, and good for her for punching through every day and actually getting out of bed and feeding herself and maybe going back to school in a couple months, good for her and everything, and I just want a couple days away from everything. Not a week of not existing, not like that. Just a week of not being there with everyone about everything. Okay?”

“More than,” Dru said. “Thank you.”

Spike was still looking at her. Not right at her, not straight eye contact, because he was looking her up and down. Not in a creepy way; he was seeing how she was talking. She’d asked him once, when Mom was sick and nobody was telling her what was happening, how he was so good at checking for lies. He’d told her, _People don’t lie with their bodies._

She’d tested it out with everyone she knew after that. He’d explained about shoulders and legs, and the way people held their arms and hands. To find regular and consistent patterns, to figure out what fear looked like in men and women and children. He didn’t just listen to the tones of voice or the words people used or look at the faces people made. He looked at the ways people held themselves when they didn’t want to give bad news versus the ways they held themselves when they knew someone needed them.

He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t taking up a whole lot of space. He was just looking at her, with his eyes gone cold, and his arm over the couch to say he belonged where he was sitting and Dawn didn’t.

Dru was still standing in the kitchen area, standing still, braced and waiting.

“I just wanted to get away from everyone for a while.”

“And you settled on us. Can’t say it’s not flattering.”

“You’re not going to call Buffy, are you?”

“No, I’m not going to give her a ring. Not unless you want me to be the one to break the news to her about you running away.”

It never stopped catching her the way he could put together stuff like that.

“See, if she knew you were here, _she’d_ have called us to let us know,” he said.

“Where does she think you are?” Dru asked right before the kettle screamed and dinged.

“At Monica’s. She’s a friend of mine. You don’t know her. I told her Buffy might call, and asked her to hold her off for me for a while.”

“Covering your bases, good strategy.” Spike nodded. “Making sure you’ve got an alibi. See that she doesn’t start suspecting for a while.”

“Yeah, I thought –”

“So you’ve got two days, maybe three, before she starts to really question her. Put the pressure on, double-check her stories. Little sister’s run off, little sister’s not around, little sister’s somehow never there when she calls. You’re right that I don’t know this Monica, but I suspect it won’t take much for her to buckle under a woman like Buffy when she’s trying to find someone she loves who’s gone missing.”

“Then I’ll call Buffy and lie. I’ll tell her –”

“Won’t work. She’ll turn around and make sure Monica’s saying the same. You’d do better to call your friend first, make sure you’ve got the story figured out before either of you starts telling it. It’s barely ten past six, now’s a good time to get started on the details.”

“Okay, and –”

“Make sure her parents are in on this for good measure. If Buffy gets one of them on the phone, that’ll be all it takes. No, Dawn’s not been here, no, we’ve no idea where she might’ve gone, now you’ve gotten yourself into a proper spot of trouble. See to it they know to cover for you, if it comes to that.”

“It won’t, though.”

“It might, is the problem. You got here on your own easily enough and in one piece. You want to stay? Make sure she won’t come tearing through half the state to get to you. Oh, thanks, love.” Dru handed them each a mug of tea. “It’d be easier to call her and let her know where you are.”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

“Leaving yourself so vulnerable to the wrong line of questioning. Poor thinking. Oh, darling,” Dru shook her head, “there’s still time to see to mending. Shore up all the lines of defense, see that nothing gets through to leave you wounded.”

“It’s fine. It’s really fine. I’ll call Monica’s house and…” Neither of them tried to fill the silence, and Dawn let it sink in. She was the one who’d run away to hide out with two crazy people. Which was itself pretty crazy. But they weren’t crazy about everything in the world. Just a lot of it. And if you got insane _enough_ , that was kind of like being sane from the opposite side. “Was this a bad idea? Running away here.”

“That’s not up to us to decide,” Spike said.

“You’ve got the reasoning to make your own choices,” Dru said. “We trust you to live with what comes from them.”

“Yeah, but all this stuff about making sure Buffy doesn’t worry about where I am so I can stay here – you want me to stay here?” Dru shrugged and Spike rolled his eyes around, considering. “What was I supposed to do? I had to leave. I _had_ to, I had to get out of there. Nobody _says_ anything, they all expect it to be done even though they just shot me off down there and I didn’t even get to finish eighth grade here and – what else was I supposed to do?”

“Not tell anyone,” Spike said.

“What?”

“That’s how you do it, if you really want to run away. No need for any lies if you’ve disappeared completely. No need for any conspiracy if there’s nothing to conspire over. Just up and vanish.”

“It’s simpler, for certain,” Dru said. 

“It’s what we did.”

“But we do admire your forethought. All the effort you put into vanishing when none of it was needed.”

“I thought it’d be easier for Buffy if she thought – if I was just hiding for a while, and she thought I was fine.”

“How long’s a while?” Spike asked.

“A week?”

They looked at each other. Something flickered through Dru’s face, and Spike’s eyebrows shifted and settled back.

“I’d say we can manage that,” he told Dru.

“A week of hiding seems a fair thing to want,” she told Spike.

They both looked at Dawn. They could be all over the place, Dru taking breaks from reality all the time and Spike sometimes quitting being a whole person for a while, and they could still pull all their attention onto one thing when they needed to. Being that thing was something Dawn tried not to squirm away from. It was fine that she was here. It was fine for _everyone_ that she was here.

“When’s dinner?” She asked, partly to break the moment and partly because she was getting hungry.

“Seven on the dot,” Dru said, settling the matter.


	2. like the kids in arms all said they would

Dinner was leftovers. Dawn heaped on the praise, exclaiming how tasty everything was, giving way more compliments than any of them knew the meal deserved. Spike and Dru went along with it, thanking her politely, and neither of them let her even put so much as a spoon in the dishwasher. Which wasn’t exactly what she was trying to escape from, but at least right now, she could understand it. If Jeanine or Dad or Buffy did that, it got under her skin and started eating away at her inside-out. When Spike and Dru did, she was their guest, so it was them being polite.

She’d asked them about other rules for how to behave in their house, going for point-blank straight-up honesty. It turned out they were pretty ordinary ones. Stuff like making sure to knock if a door was closed and asking permission before borrowing a bike was pretty much the same everywhere. But stuff like making sure to tell them where she was going or when she’d be back and making sure someone was always around would have been ordinary for Dad and Jeanine and Buffy, though. Not for them. 

“You guys don’t need to watch me all day. It’s not like there’s a lot of trouble I can get into in Sunnydale. What am I going to do, tip over some recycling bins?”

“And what might we say, should your sister ask on about your time with us?” Dru said. “We’ll not have her thinking we ever left you alone.”

“She isn’t going to find out,” Dawn pressed. “You really don’t need to watch me all day.”

“Not all of the day, no. But better for someone to be home to welcome you should you decide to take a stroll. We wouldn’t want you hanging about all alone as happened yesterday. Not two days in a row. It’d send a poor message to the neighbors.”

“And we all care what the neighbors think,” Dawn muttered.

“Of course we do.” Spike said it plainly, without any sarcasm or irony. “We know we’re talked about. We’d like it not to turn nasty.” Dawn stared, trying to get the words to her mouth, _since when do you care what_ – “What was it you’d wanted to do while you’re here?” he went on. “Friends you wanted to get back in touch with, little cafés you missed?”

It was true there were a few things she wanted to see – okay, not _want_ so much in terms of anticipated pleasure. Not like seeing a movie want. “I’d like to see Mom.”

“We can pay her a visit whenever you wish,” Dru said.

Dawn looked down at the mug in her hands, at the fraying-at-the-edges placemat, at the wooden grain of the round kitchen table. _How about right now? Tonight’s good, I don’t have anything else to do._ “Maybe tomorrow. Or Saturday.”

“Like Dru said, whenever you want,” Spike said.

“Thanks.”

“Though if we’re going to see Joyce tomorrow, let me know now so we can call in the day.”

“Call in the what?”

“Call in the day. Dru and I can’t just skip out of work because we’ve got a friend over, not unless we’re ready and willing to accept the consequences of that – which we might well be, if those consequences didn’t also feature our absences making the days more difficult for everyone working without us. We call and let them know we’re not coming in, make up something convincing over the phone, there’s grousing, but there’s no wondering where we’ve got off to or why. If we don’t show up or say anything at all…”

“I get it,” she snapped.

“We’ve both got a little leave time saved up, a few sick days. We’d hoped to use them later, both of us together, but – what do you think, Dru, you call in tomorrow and I take Monday? Spread it out some?”

“That seems quite sensible,” she said. “And we’ll take the days after that as they arrive.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

There wasn’t much more to say after that. Just Spike excusing himself to head out for a cigarette, and Dawn feeling tired enough to get ready for bed at eight o’clock. Which hadn’t been her bedtime for _years_ , but something about having to get up at five to take the bus to the train station and all the stress of worrying if her plan would work or if she’d be sent right back where she came from and all the exhaustion from having all that stress leave immediately, plus the lavender tea, was making her ready to crawl under some covers and close her eyes.

When Spike got back, the secondhand smell of smoke a little faded, the couch was already unfolded, Dawn and Dru fitting the sheets to it. He took in the sight and asked, “Who wants the first shower?”

“I’ll take it,” Dawn said.

“You need someone to show you which way the taps work?”

“No, I think I’ll be okay.”

He nodded, almost kind of smiling. “Bully for you,” he murmured, and went to get her some towels.

It wasn’t a huge bathroom – sink, toilet, shower-bath, medicine cabinet, towel racks, framed art print on the wall across from the mirror. Toothpaste and floss and mouthwash in the medicine cabinet along with deodorant and hair stuff, but also painkillers, as good as you could get without a doctor’s prescription. Lots of bath soaps and shower gels, enough she had her choice of scents that ranged from light and floral to dark and smooth, and everything fruity and tropical in between. She wondered who’d picked out what, and which came from actual stores or that they’d gotten half-used at garage sales along with new nail polish.

Shower done, pajamas on, clothes folded, teeth brushed, she opened the door and peeked out to find the apartment the same as how she’d left it. As beds went, the sofa wasn’t that bad. In terms of sheer square footage, it was probably bigger than her single at home. She could measure them and compare when she got back, if she remembered.

Falling asleep in a new place wasn’t ever easy, no matter how tired she was. She kept having to roll over and flip the pillow to the cool side until none of it was cool anymore. It didn’t matter she was exhausted. All that counted was there wasn’t any communication between the tired parts of herself and the rest of it, the parts that said they should’ve been at home reading comics right now. _Peanuts_ or _Bloom County_ or something. There wasn’t a lamp she could turn on or a bedside table where – 

“Aw, crud,” she said.

There wasn’t anyone in the living room or dining area or kitchen to protest her turning on the lights, or to ask her why it was so important that she get even just two lines down in her journal for the day. And they were both short lines. It was enough to still have it there. It wasn’t something she needed to do like breathe or eat: it was something she needed to do like wear socks.

_Ran away to Sunnydale. Staying at Spike and Dru’s._

She stuffed everything back where she’d pulled it from, and that all done, tucked herself back away between the sheets, finally letting her mind go slack and her body rest.


	3. awake the babies handing them on

Waking up early was fine. She’d gone to bed early, so this was still her getting enough sleep. The hours had been pushed around, that’s all, like if she’d hopped time zones instead of a couple of cities. Lying around in bed in the place she’d run away to was one of the things little adventures like this were made for in the first place. Dawn couldn’t see a clock and didn’t want to move to get her watch, so she stayed curled up under the sheets, trying to get enough energy to do more than rub her feet together and pull her legs in close. She knew it wasn’t like she was going to fall back asleep. But she could at least try to roll over to the side and grab a book. Her backpack was right there, she could imagine it leaning against the side of the couch just a few feet away. Just scoot over. Push against the bed and let physics do its job. Right over there.

The sound of a door opening and feet moving down the hallway was enough to get her top open her eyes. The feet stopping and the sound of Spike saying _pants_ was enough to get her to roll over, one-two-three-one-two-three- _move_ , and see Spike in his pink bathrobe walk into the kitchen area. Past her, not looking her way, single-minded with his early morning task that was probably getting the morning coffee ready.

“Hey,” she called out quietly.

“Oh, good morning,” he said. “Didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No, I was already up.”

“Glad to hear it. Anything on the docket for the day?”

“Not really.” She managed to sit up and saw she’d almost guessed right: he’d set three mugs out on the counter and was measuring out leaves for the pot.

“Well, you change your mind or remember something, just let us know.”

“Okay.”

It’d been months since he’d last made her tea – two days before the funeral, in her old house’s kitchen – but he still remembered how she took it. He probably wouldn’t ever forget. They drank from their mugs quietly, and when she was finished, he took the empty one from her without any comment, Dru’s still on the countertop, ready and waiting.

“I was planning on heading out for a quick smoke, if you’d care to join me,” he said. “Though you might want to get dressed first.”

She hurried into her clothes but didn’t bother with shoes, not when they were just going around to the side of the building. She almost wanted to go back up to the apartment and put them on, because it was still early enough in the day the concrete was cold under her feet. Especially in the shade. They’d gone around past the parking lot to the little strip of tall bushes and grasses between the fence and the next property over where they kept the dumpsters. It was one of those little spots every city and town had scattered throughout, sort of a hall closet for the building. Spike lit a cigarette and Dawn shifted another half-step away. He took his time with it, relaxing into the cloud of chemicals and cancer agents. He slipped his right hand into the bathrobe’s side pocket, wrapping his fingers around something; Dawn looked up at the brightening sky. When he was finished, and tossed the butt into one of the dumpsters, he motioned for Dawn to follow him towards the empty lot behind the parking lot, near the fence.

What he’d been playing with was a small red plastic container. He unscrewed the top and said, “Hold out your hands.” She got some birdseed as a reward. “They won’t come close with you around. They don’t know you, don’t know to trust you. It’s nothing to worry about. Just toss it thataways, they’ll still come.” He tossed out a bit of his own, and she copied the movement, getting it near where his landed.

“You do this every morning?”

“If I can.” He called out to the birds, three different sounds one right after another. Not like a human calling to their animal friends in a movie, _hey buddy I’m right here_ , but Spike’s way of trying to sound as much like an animal calling out to another one as his human throat could manage. Which might still be him saying _hey buddy I’m right here_. Just not in a way that most people would understand. Maybe some ornithologists or military troops trained for secret forest missions. Or the Girl Scouts.

Spike was right that they didn’t come close. But they came, all right. Mostly little brown-white-black shapes from the trees and grasses that blurred together. She could pick out the scrub jay, but the rest, even the yellow ones, could’ve been anything. They flew away when Spike tossed out more seeds but came right back, coming and going until he and Dawn ran out of food to give them.

He called out again right before they left. As morning rituals went, it was a pretty good one.

Dru was up by then, getting breakfast ready. She hadn’t put the bed back, but she’d made sure to put her face on. “Any news from the flocks?” she asked, kissing Spike good-morning.

“Nothing of note.” He kissed her again, and his hand lingered on her shoulder as he walked past, heading back towards their bedroom. Dawn put the bed back before sitting down at the table with her back to the window and getting served an omelet. A good one, like Dru always made, with chives cooked in the butter and plenty of onions.

After she’d brushed her teeth, Dawn called Monica’s house and got her first thing; Spike coached her quietly, and after she hung up, he said, “Rupert’s still in town, you know.”

“Who – oh, you mean Mr. Giles.”

“We don’t talk much, but I doubt he’d mind a drop-in.”

“No way. I mean, he’d probably call Buffy even if I asked him not to. And he wasn’t ever my school librarian.” He was supposed to have been, though. It was weird to think about the future that was going to have been, or some sort of irregular future pluperfect like that. How she would’ve gone to Sunnydale High in a couple of years and made up another one of those sibling chains that sometimes happened when a family was really settled in somewhere. One sister or brother coming on after another.

Xander was probably in Sunnydale right now. Willow, too. On break in between college semesters. Xander’s girlfriend Anya, maybe. Spike and Dru had a standard-issue county phone book on the kitchen counter right next to the phone; she could look them up, make a couple of calls, see if they wanted to meet for coffee or milkshakes or frozen yogurt. It’d be simple to do. Their numbers were right there in between those covers. But they’d never been _her_ friends. They were Buffy’s friends, and still called her sometimes down in San Diego. Not Dawn. All of her friends – they’d be in the phone book, too. Janice and everyone. I’m just in town, no reason, want to spend time together, great, see you. Sit down and talk and not say anything important because they’d already heard her say all of it. We’re sorry your mom died, we’ll miss you, good-bye. She still had all their addresses from the class guide she’d gotten last September – and she knew exactly where it was, in the red folder in the moving box in the back of the closet in her room at Dad’s – and maybe she’d write some more postcards like she’d been meaning to. She’d only sent out one batch after she’d moved. She still had a whole bunch.

Maybe when she went back.


	4. we’ll steal her excess

Spike didn’t put on any makeup or his shoes just to smoke his first cigarette of the day or eat breakfast, but he did to go to work. Eyeliner, and heavy boots he laced up tight, the sort of boots people used for stomping around and kicking ass and protecting their feet from chemical spills. He gave Dru a good-bye kiss and Dawn another round of subtle reminders about being sufficiently well-behaved, and then the two of them had the apartment to themselves for the next few hours. She flopped down onto the couch, now folded back up for regular daytime sitting, and looked around again.

Dru sat down on the far end of the couch, holding her hands in her lap. “Ordinarily, if I have a day of not needing to be anywhere, I take it by doing things I’m not usually given the time for. You’re certain you’ve planned nothing for this escapade besides visiting your mum?”

“I just thought I’d get to Sunnydale and figure it out when I’m there.”

“A solid strategy through the ages. I’ll want to head out for a while later, but if you’ve anywhere to be, just let me know where you’ve gone.”

“I’ve got a book, but…” She glanced down at Dru’s hands. She knew she worked as a janitor, cleaning out rooms and scrubbing toilets and dealing with all sorts of dirty things – both stuff with dirt on it and stuff that was just _dirty_ – in addition to whatever grossness college students managed to throw in her way. Her nails were cut short, barely longer than her fingers. And she was still wearing nail polish. She’d have to take so much care of her hands, make sure they didn’t get hurt, all the cleaning work she did and to keep up with nail polish on top of that – _People like to hold onto things that let them be themselves._ “You still do Tarot readings?” she asked.

“With moderate frequency. Would you like me to give you one here or in the bedroom?”

“Ah – the bedroom,” Dawn said, pouncing on the chance.

“Right this way, then.”

She’d never actually been in their bedroom before. She’d peeked through the hallway a couple of times, and leaned over and looked around through the doorway without stepping any farther, but the act of going through the door felt like a Rubicon. It wasn’t something she’d have been able to come back from. Having to walk behind Dru and wait for her to open the door and then step inside was her going inside their bedroom, but because of the way she was going inside, it was something she could still come back from. Like she couldn’t go inside _unless_ someone had invited and was supervising her.

It was a nicer place to sleep than the office of an abandoned cannery at the outskirts of town, but that wasn’t a surprise. What was, though, was Mom’s desk. Dawn took two polite steps into the bedroom, hands clasped behind her back, waiting for Dru to give her some direction on where to sit and trying to look at everything, but nothing was as important as Mom’s desk. Doing the job of a desk, with papers and pens guarded by a cute lamp and assorted office supplies in their own little containers. Her mom’s desk. Not sold off anonymously in the estate sale she hadn’t been around to watch happen. Her desk was right here, still in Sunnydale, and it wasn’t as though it was a vintage piece from 1750 of priceless antique wood. It was just a desk her mom had used for a while.

It was a desk someone she’d known had used, and people she knew were still using it.

_Maybe they’d just needed a desk and after she died they figured they’d buy it. It’s not something they wouldn’t do._

“The bed or the floor?” Dawn spun around to see Dru standing by one of the bookshelves, holding the Tarot deck. “Either one’s suitable. Which would you prefer?”

“Floor, please.”

“Then take a seat, and we’ll begin.” She settled at the foot of the bed, and Dawn sat down across from her. “Now, have you got any questions ready? Anything weighing on you that you’ve already put to words? There’s nothing wrong if you haven’t. But if you know what it is you’re after, it’ll be a bit easier to read what comes.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I do know. I just don’t know how to…” She resettled, trying not to fidget on the hard floor. Dru kept on shuffling. “I know grieving’s hard, and I know there’s no way you’re _supposed_ to have it happen, it does what it does. I know that. I know running away was a pretty crappy thing to do to Buffy even if I go home before she finds out. I know I can’t ask the deck to tell me why Dad’s not as upset as us and I know I don’t need it to tell me why Buffy’s back like she was right before we moved here. I guess what I want is something to help me figure out what to do next. Emotionally, I mean.” She’d been going to Jeanine’s Meetings more since moving to San Diego. It was good to have a place to sit and not have to talk, but even though she knew it was weird, she sometimes wished she had doctors like Buffy did, or that she could’ve come along when she had appointments. She’d wanted to talk. Just because she wasn’t sick didn’t mean she couldn’t have used someone for talking who’d listen.

“I’m going into ninth grade next year and I’ll be making new friends all over again. I’m _tired_ of making new friends all the time. I miss having old friends. I want to feel like I belong somewhere. Dad didn’t take custody of us back when he and Mom divorced. I don’t know why we didn’t go off to Chicago, Mom’s sister lives out there, we could’ve lived with her. But maybe that would’ve been worse since we’d be leaving California. I want to know what I need to do to feel like I’m not falling. I don’t want to know what’s next, I don’t want to know what to do next. I want to know what to do now.”

Dru put the deck down on the floor by her left knee. “Not a very elegantly worded question, but a well-asked one. It’s been plaguing us all since we began walking. Some of what you’ve asked isn’t for the deck, but for your sister, and I know you’re clever enough to figure out a way to speak with her now that you’ve managed to start figuring out the words you need for such work. As for the rest, let’s see to the present circumstances we can’t quite yet perceive, and glean what we can from that further knowledge. How large a spread would you like?”

“I’d like the five-card one. We can start now.” 

She nodded and hummed, set the deck down, and started spreading the cards. Mostly numbers, and like any good Tarot reading, didn’t tell her what she didn’t already know. Just, what she didn’t know she knew. That it was up to her to take action, and also to measure how much action was needed – things like accepting that not everyone had to be her best friend. Stepping away from her old expectations of what she was supposed to be doing and turning her attention towards what it was she wanted. Looking to find out what she needed to carry herself through the world. The cards wouldn’t tell her what that was, just that she had to figure it out. 

It didn’t tell Dawn much she didn’t know, but it gave her something solid to think about.

When it was done, and Dru began gathering up the cards, Dawn stood up, stretching her arms, and looked around the room again, trying to take in more than the desk. More than the dresser, more than the art on the walls. There were dolls on the shelves now, three of them. The one Dru had been carrying around since God-knew-when had friends now. Or maybe she’d been reunited with her long-lost sisters. Though it was also possible that Dru knew they were toys and didn’t think of them as babies or people, just as people-shaped objects that she liked holding and carrying around and talking to.

Spike’s little arrangements had gotten more elaborate, too. Perfume bottles flanking a soap dish with a couple of stones and dried leaves on one shelf, flattened marbles with mismatched earrings and little bits of plastic on another. 

Whatever Dru thought of her dolls, whatever Spike’s reasons for making his little tableaus, they were the only things keeping the library from taking up all the available bookshelf space. The small library Spike had carried around had blown up exponentially, enormously, by several orders of magnitude. These weren’t books to carry around anymore, except one at a time. Especially the oversized ones were together on the bottom shelf of the bookcase closest to the bed. Maps of the world, magazine covers, photographs, a couple big bird and astronomy books. And those wouldn’t get carried farther than maybe to the chair in the other corner or out to the couch.

“Mind if I take a look at these?” She asked, just to be safe.

“Go right on ahead.” 

Books to put back right where they’d come from, because they hadn’t gone far.

“Can I read one of these?”

“No reason for you not to.” 

“I mean, out in the living room.”

“I’m not seeing where this confusion’s coming from. The permission’s already been granted.”

“Sorry. I just wanted to make sure.” She pressed her voice out, trying to play things like they were easy, and Dru gave her a skeptical look – knowing Dawn was being honest and also not saying everything – before shaking her head and waving her off, _take the book, it’s okay._

“Just be careful not to treat them roughly. The large ones can break easily, if they’re not well supported.”

“Will do. I mean, will be careful.”

She’d grabbed a book of magazine photographs, a _Rolling Stone_ portrait collection that still had the library book sale price penciled in on the top right of the first white page. The whole thing was fine, and they were good pictures. She found herself slowing down to actually enjoy them instead of having to wait long enough for the pretense to pay off. Which, when it came, earned her another skeptical look followed by another wave-off, _go put it back, it’s fine._

Totally and completely fine. Because she wasn’t being supervised, but she’d been _told_ it was fine as long as she was going inside the bedroom for the purpose of putting the book back. Which she totally was doing. That part was honest. It just wasn’t the full purpose. Dawdling at the shelves to take in the bedroom sections of their home library didn’t exactly fall under that heading, but she’d been told going into the bedroom by herself was okay, and she was going to keep her hands to herself and leave the door open and not touch anything. She’d take a closer look at what they had and slip back out and there was nothing for her to worry about since she was following the rules.

Maybe not _obeying_ them, but she was still following them. That was the important part.

She wasn’t trying to see how many of Mom’s books they’d gotten. She wasn’t trying to see anything other than what it was they had in their bedroom’s four different bookcases. Which was more books about California than England, even counting the big oversized ones of landscape and city photos. There were some about music, a few about astronomy, more on nuns and witches and wild feminism. A whole bunch of books about words and writing kept right next to Spike’s now-sprawling vampire collection. The poetry section was alphabetized by author with the big anthologies pushed together at the front. Their library didn’t follow Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress; they just went by whatever general topics needed to be kept together and whatever else fit next to it on that specific shelf.

Dad kept everything in his study carefully arranged, from his pens to his bills to his books. General architecture was organized by movement, by building type, by school of design, by city. More specific than that and he started to go by focus: architecture photography was sorted alphabetically by author, or by historic era. He had a whole section of popular books – as popular as they got, anyway – about things like city parks and people like Jane Jacobs.

Mom had been messier. Her office in the gallery had been tidy, with everything stacked up or shelved neatly. It just hadn’t been organized. Not even nearly as well as Spike and Dru’s own collection. She’d known where everything was and that’d been fine for her. If anyone needed something, she’d gotten it for them and put it back wherever it fit. People had offered to sort it, but she’d never taken anyone up on it. She’d told them about those offers as jokes around the dinner table. _Could you believe it? I told them, the time it’d take to get it all organized is time I could be using to run the place, if you really want to help me out, make sure that –_

And then Dawn saw something that made her throat go tight.

_Here they are._

Their books about themselves.

Buffy’s books about herself took up part of a shelf in her room in San Diego. Spike and Drusilla’s section spilled out, covering two full shelves of the wide, tall bookcase right next to their bed, slowly encroaching onto a third. There were books about understanding autistic people. About surviving life with schizophrenia. How to accept help, how to survive, how to become a real person. Breaking out of mental illness into the regular world. About having a child who was insane. About having a parent who wasn’t all there. How to live a normal life when you were crazy. Making friends with your demons. What it was like to break down and what you had to do to build everything back up. People talking about the diseases and illnesses and disabilities and conditions. People talking about other people. People talking about themselves.

_When you’re deep in it,_ Buffy had said, _you can’t scream. You can’t call for help. You can’t even cry. You’re deep, deep in it, and all you want is to climb out, or get through it, and there’s nothing, I mean nothing, to help you figure out which way you’ve got to go, or what you’ve got to do. You’re just there. You’re stuck. And sometimes something just happens, and you realize, I have to go that way. And sometimes someone parachutes down and grabs you or gives you a map and that’s how you start moving. But sometimes you manage to get enough energy to scream. Maybe you’re not screaming too loud, but you’re still screaming. And it’s when you’re screaming that the best thing you can hear, believe me, the best thing, is someone screaming back._

These books were Spike and Dru finally hearing that scream.

_Did you ever hate me?_ She’d asked Buffy once. Just once, sitting together in Buffy’s room in Dad’s condo. After the funeral, after Dad and Buffy finished up all the work of closing up Mom’s estate, the night he and Buffy had finally come home.

_A little bit. Not for long. Just after… I’d really, really wanted to die. I’m glad you found me. And yeah, for about ten minutes there in the hospital, I was upset you’d come home early. Come on, all this fuss, just let me slip back under already and_ go, _let me get_ done _with this. There were all these hands on my body in the ambulance and all these lights and sounds, and in the hospital it was hard and bright and everything was too much. I wanted it to go back to being soft, and quiet, and just for it to all be nothing._

She’d smiled at Dawn, and it’d been Dawn who’d started crying.

_Then I didn’t. I didn’t want to die. I won’t stop thinking about it, because that’s depression for you, but it’s not something I want anymore. It’s become something that I did. I’m glad you were there. Every day I get up and fight because you were there when you weren’t supposed to be. Those ten minutes were the worst because that’s the only time in my life I’ve ever hated you. Eleven minutes and I was fighting to stay awake and get to minute twelve because I was ready to be alive again. I was ready to finally start screaming._


	5. I watched the tide slip through my hands

After lunch, Dru took her on a walk. It wasn’t really Dawn’s idea of a good time. If she had a day like this – okay, if she had a job she was taking a day away from to look after someone staying over, she’d do what she could to make sure that person was happy and enjoying themselves, and fresh air did help, and it wasn’t like there was much to do in Sunnydale anyway. Of the limited options, going for a walk was one of the better ones.

They didn’t say much to each other for the first few blocks. There was the ‘nice day isn’t it’ and ‘yeah, it is’ and all the usual back-and-forth that went with that, which was just a long-winded way of saying they were acknowledging each other’s presence. At least until Dru looked at her watch and said, “This is the time when I’d be starting on the offices.”

“What?”

“There’s a rhythm to how things go. Classrooms come last, at the end of the day, in case anyone needs them. Let them get as messy as the students want them before setting them back. Offices happen as requested, as wanted, as preferred. Some ask for the evening, some want nothing to do with us unless they’re supervising our every move. There’s a few that want it seen to when they’re busy in lecture, the better to pretend it’s fairies doing it. This time of day’s not so bad for office tidying. Usually it’s no worse than emptying some rubbish bins and sorting out which windows need a scrub.”

“Oh. You mean us as in the cleaning staff. Sorry, that took a moment to – yeah.” Back in Los Angeles, they’d had a cleaning lady. She came once a week, on Thursday mornings, and she did what the job said. Dad was always polite to her, always called her Mrs. Orozco with the syllables in the right places instead of flattening out her name with an American-accented steamroller. Now he didn’t have one. Now Jeanine did the laundry and scrubbed the toilets sometimes. Dawn and Buffy helped her out these days. At least, they did when they were both there. And when they were up for it. And it wasn’t like Buffy wasn’t usually up for it. Set her up with a thing to do that had a start and finish and she’d get it done. Maybe it’d take her a while, but she’d still get it done.

“It’s a fair job,” Dru went on. She turned them down an alley, and Dawn kicked at the gravel. “Hard on the knees, sometimes bad on the nose, but it doesn’t follow me home like so many others might.” She looked up, and Dawn followed her gaze to the trees pruned around the power lines. It was still early enough in summer that the leaves weren’t faded out to yellow yet and were still sharp green all the way through. Put them against the sky and it made a nice contrast between everything, the nature and the human and the void, and she’d have to remember to tell that to Mom.

No. No, no, not anymore. Not a bad thing to think that, a bad thing to keep forgetting.

She’d have to remember to write it in her journal. That’s what she’d have to do.

The gravel gave way to flat, even pavement, and she rubbed the heel of her sneakers against the very edge of the boundary between alleyway and sidewalk. She kept glancing up, and it took her half a block before she realized she’d left Dru behind. She was still at the edge of the alley, leaning over some bushes growing feral in the corner of someone’s yard. There were lots of those yards and corners around Sunnydale. Not so much in San Diego. Empty lots, sure. San Diego had plenty of spaces like the field behind Spike and Dru’s apartment building, areas left to fend for themselves for months or even years before someone decided to plunk down another set of condos. Most of them were paved up but a few of them were as wild as they could go, spindly grasses growing straight up and little vines creeping around. Sunnydale had more edges, somehow. Maybe because of how much shorter it was, or maybe because it was a place that didn’t need so many condos put in all the time, or maybe it was just because people in Sunnydale didn’t care if the side of their yard that hit up against an alleyway wasn’t magazine cover pristine.

_This is probably where she got it._

“Here.” She held out a sprig to Dawn. “Crush it and smell. Lovely, isn’t it?”

“It is.” Lavender wasn’t a smell she always thought about when it came to home. Dad didn’t garden but lavender was supposed to be easy to grow. It had to be if it was out here like this, taking care of itself all on its own. She closed her eyes and brought her hands to her face, breathing in deep. It was lavender, all right. It didn’t remind her of anything.

It would, though. She knew it would. Here in Sunnydale, as good a running away as she’d ever managed. Fifteen years old on a Friday in June with a perfect blue sky and perfect green leaves and the gravel under her sneakers. No breeze but the air was gentle in the shade, the flower in between her hands breaking apart and falling through her fingers. She rubbed her palms together, getting a little more of the scent on them, and opened her eyes to see Dru watching her. Not in a bad way. Just watching her so she’d know when Dawn was done making the memory.

“There’s jasmine a few streets over, though it’s not yet in bloom. We’d have to come by after dark.”

“Yeah,” Dawn said to fill the space. 

“Are you ready to head back?”

“Not yet,” she admitted before she could stop herself.

Dru straightened up and brushed off her jeans. “Let’s go get ourselves a treat, then. If we’ve no reason to return home, let’s make this outing special.”

Six months ago, Dawn wouldn’t have thought a walk to the Espresso Pump would count as something special. It still wasn’t a trip to Disneyland, but it was at least a day at the beach. Dru paid for Dawn’s white chocolate mocha and slice of carrot cake and got herself a coffee and triangle of baklava, and they ate their sugar and drank their caffeine without saying anything. If Dawn was walking around with a little more spring in her step, it could’ve just been chemical management, and if she thought going to Mom’s gallery was a good idea, she could always blame it on the coffee afterwards.

The gallery never really belonged to Mom. Dawn just thought of it as hers because she’d run it. She’d been responsible for everyone else there, and all the stuff that happened in it – all the new art that came in, all the paychecks that went out, plumbing and electric bills. It all went through to her, up to her office on the second floor. It wasn’t the best or most amazing view of Sunnydale since it looked out over a parking lot and the roofs of a couple other buildings, but it’d had trees, and sometimes clouds, and it was a chance to look down at people walking below. She’d done a lot for the place from there.

Dawn dropped a dollar into the donation bin by the front door. She’d never done that before, but she’d never come here when Mom hadn’t been in charge, either. They’d changed the exhibition since the last time she’d come by. But that was fine, since it’d been way before Mom died. A little after she’d gotten sick for the first time when Dawn was the one who’d had to get a few things from her office. Mom’s friend Eunice had taken her to the galley and made her some hot chocolate out of a packet. It’d felt more honest as a thing to do than a lot of other stuff people had offered, and she’d stayed in the little room a long time, just holding the mug in her hands.

Spike and Dru had come over almost every day to get back to what they’d used to do before they’d moved out: laundry, cooking, washing the windows and vacuuming the floors. This was on top of everything they were doing for themselves, and they’d never complained. They’d shown up. Xander had already moved out to his own place but would come over with bags of groceries like he was still living in the basement and didn’t even make jokes about it. Willow stopped in whenever she was home from college to pitch in and help out. Mr. Giles when he had time, even. All of Buffy’s friends gave what they could.

Dad called twice. That’d been it. Then Mom died, and they’d had to call him.

The hardwood floors echoed around the ceramic sculptures as Dawn walked through the room. Some were recognizably things like towels and dogs, and others were just…shapes. The best Dawn could do was shapes. Not even things like giant heads with eyes where there shouldn’t ever be any. Just shapes. She stood and looked at one for a while, hands clasped behind her back, and tried moving around it to get a better idea of what it was by approaching it from all angles.

_A lot of what people say is great art was done on commission – someone paid Da Vinci to paint the Mona Lisa. Sometimes the only thing art means is, ‘I had a lot of money and wanted to spend it on something pretty to hang on the wall.’ Art doesn’t have to mean something great or profound. Edward Hopper said all he wanted was to paint sunlight on the side of a house. Sometimes all you need to do with art is experience it. Just look at it, and whatever happens inside, that’s what it means._

_What if I don’t feel anything?_ Dawn asked.

_Then you say, ‘I hope whoever made this had a good time,’ and move onto the next one._

“Hope you had fun,” she said softly, and moved on.

Mom had walked her through the gallery once, both floors of it, on a private art tour the first month they’d lived in Sunnydale. Way before Buffy invited Spike and Dru over, back when it was still a new town. She didn’t miss it being new. Moving to San Diego had been moving to a place she’d gotten to know a little bit and where she’d already had a bedroom, not somewhere she’d never been at all. 

Upstairs was paintings. Some of them were shapes arranged in ways she hoped the artist had fun painting and some of them were colors she hoped the artist had fun picking out. A few were shapes arranged in ways that suddenly locked into place as faces or landscapes. Some were very much what they were supposed to be, like a swimming pool or a truck on the side of the road. The one she stopped to look at was of a building on a corner, two stories tall and blue, with a truck parked outside and a lot of traffic cones around with a sign that it was a construction site. It took her a few minutes of trying to figure out where it was exactly that she realized it wasn’t exactly anywhere. The title was just _Construction Site._ Not _Construction Site, Modesto_ or _Construction Site, West LA_ – just _Construction Site_. It might be of a specific place where the artist did sketches and studies and maybe brought out her easel and paintbrushes, but it was almost probably just her _idea_ of a building on a corner somewhere.

Dawn hoped that was what she’d wanted.

There was a message on the answering machine when they got home that Dawn didn’t hear because she ducked right into the bathroom, but Dru relayed to her as soon as she was done.

“Spike won’t be back for some time. He’s traded his time and favors in exchange for some unexpected bounty, treats of his own. He said, some professor’s book hit the stands today, and he’ll be delayed in bringing home what’s left afterwards so we’d do well to wait for him. He said a snack would be fine, or dinner if we like, but he wants an appetite for his surprise.”

He got back when it was already getting into sunset, and the yogurt-and-cereal Dawn ate around four was long gone. He dumped his backpack onto the table with a solid, round thump, called them over, and made a show of pulling out plastic takeout container after plastic takeout container, the exact kind in the UC Sunnydale cafeteria. All the containers were filled up with as much as they’d hold, but not with limp egg salad wraps or stale oatmeal cookies. He’d brought back little cubes of cheese, small bunches of grapes, fancy sliced meat, strawberries, melon, fancy four-layered cookies, crackers, carrots and broccoli and other raw vegetables, and that was just the start. Finger foods and snacks that got served at parties where people wore fancy shoes and didn’t sit down and had plenty left over for people to take home. Except the people that got invited to those parties didn’t need to take it home. The people cleaning up those parties did.

“I’d say this was worth the delay,” Spike said.

“More than,” said Dru, transferring everything out of the flimsy plastic into sturdier Tupperware and old yogurt containers.

“Who knows where this all came from, but it’s nice to have now.”

“Most likely someplace it never stops being warm.”

“Maybe Chile,” Dawn said, popping a cherry tomato into her mouth. “Or Mexico.”

“This time of year, could well be local,” said Spike. “But wherever it’s from, it’d be a shame to toss it out, after all the trouble everyone took to get it here.”


	6. can’t fool the UK pop brigade

Spike’s evening cigarette got smoked with the same time and care as his morning one. She doubted he was down to just two a day – maybe sometimes, on the nice, pleasant days when nothing went wrong, but not every day on Earth was like that.

The smoke smelled better at night. It still wasn’t _good_ , and it wasn’t ever something she’d buy as a body lotion or spray, no matter what store she was shopping at. It’d just gotten nicer now that the sun was setting and it was getting dark. Something with how the breezes were moving the day’s scents around and giving the smoke other aromas to mix into instead of overpowering everything, like the way it had with early morning. And another something with how the heat that hadn’t completely faded off let it settle down. There weren’t overhead lights around the little smoking strip, but there was some brightness spilling out from the parking lot, and Spike blew out the next breath upwards, so the edges of the smoke caught enough light it could pretend to be a cloud.

“Is it okay if I stay out here a bit longer? You don’t have to stay out with me if you don’t want to. I wasn’t going to go anywhere. Just get some night air.”

“Long as you’re willing to stick to that promise and stay in sight of the building.” He dropped the butt into the closest dumpster, and let the lid fall down with a flat, round thump. “Of course, your being here in the first place means I can’t trust you right off when it comes to you promising you’ll stick around one little spot.”

“Look, I’m not going anywhere. What’s open right now? What’s open that I could walk to? It’s not like there’s a lot of stuff around here to worry about.”

“Bollocks. There’s _always_ something to worry about when you’re taking care of someone.” He wasn’t looking right at her anymore. “More and less, depending on the circumstances, but it’s never nothing. I’ll hang around back here, give you some distance, but I’m not heading back up until you’re going.”

That seemed close enough to understandable that Dawn didn’t want to fight it. Or analyze it to argue against it. She just walked out to the parking lot itself and kicked at some rubble that’d gotten tossed around the pavement. The lot wasn’t big, and it didn’t need to be, and it was only half-full. She stepped up onto one of the little raised blocks at the end of an empty parking space, right at the edge of the lot, right at the sidewalk, and walked along it like a balance beam, holding her arms out to purposefully make herself feel silly to get over how irked she was. It kind of worked. She looked around for Spike, suddenly upset he’d stopped bleaching his hair. He was still pretty pale, as people went – she guessed English people knew their way around sunscreen – but he’d been a lot easier to find when he’d practically glowed in the dark.

She jumped off the block-beam and walked along the edge of the parking lot, kicking at the weeds encroaching from the empty lot, back towards the smoking strip. Halfway down, deliberately keeping her eyes away from the strip, she turned towards the little field. She couldn’t smell Spike’s cigarette smoke anymore. What she could smell was the tall, dry grass making shivery, echoing sounds in the breeze – it wasn’t a big enough field to really get that good dry-grass smell like there was at the edge of town. She’d ridden out there a few times, first when she’d moved to Sunnydale and later when she’d wanted to get some distance between herself and everyone else when she’d been upset. Upset with Buffy and Mom for being sick, upset with herself for being upset about things Buffy couldn’t manage that Dawn herself was handling fine without any trouble, upset with Mom for getting better and then dying when she’d been better instead of just dying when she’d first gotten sick because that would’ve hurt less.

She liked that smell. It always made her feel better, because it meant she was alone with her feelings, whatever they were, and she could just settle in and feel them without having to think about what they were. Just, here they are, that’s all. Even in her journal, she had to put things into words. Which also helped, when she was scribbling down how it was to be back in the Espresso Pump and not have anyone chide her for her coffee choice or make sure she’d gotten a decaf. 

Except that as the night crawled on, Dawn began to get ready to consider admitting the mocha might’ve been a bad idea. She’d wait until midnight to arrive at one conclusion or another, but until then, she’d keep it at speculation and pondering. And trying just to lie in bed with her eyes closed, because at least she’d let her muscles get some rest even if her brain couldn’t manage to relax enough to shut down for the night.

After a while, she got up to use the bathroom, more to have something to do than because she had to pee. She didn’t turn on any lights, walking with her fingertips against the wall, and with the door closed, the bathroom was as dark a room as she’d ever been inside. Closing her eyes didn’t make a difference. She waved her hand in front of her face, and she knew where it was because she could feel it, but couldn’t see anything. Not even after waiting a while to make sure she’d adjusted as much as possible.

That, at least, was pretty cool.

When she was finished, she opened the door gently, in case she was the only one awake in the apartment. She waited to be certain, and then caught a bit of noise that – that still didn’t tell her much one way or the other. So she stayed close to the wall, inching her way through the hall, until she was right up at the bedroom door. Not completely closed; they’d left it open a little crack. A little crack that was big enough to let sound out, as long as she was right next to it and totally silent.

“…saved it for you, if you want to take a read later. Anyway, the working theory they’ve got going, they’ve got it built on how you’ve learned language from the very start. They said culture’s built into the grammar, the vocab, the whole way you see the world.” 

“It seems a reasonable enough idea. You don’t need words for what isn’t important.”

“That’s not what I’m on about. What’s got me worked up is that they’re not making any allowances for what happens when something comes along you _know_ you need a word for and it doesn’t exist. Maybe in the bigger world, but not in your own.”

“Ah. Lacking the insanity control group.”

“They’d never even considered it. I checked the citations, even. All that tiny print, and nothing they’d even written off. Ignored us lunatics the whole way down.”

“Now I think I’ve gotten what you’re after. It’s not as though I had a guidebook on how to lose my mind. Nobody showed me the way.”

“Right. There’s no words as it’s happening because you didn’t know them then. But there’s no denying there’s the mind cleaving, the seams you can’t match.”

“Like balls upon a floor.”

“You find the words after the fact. And the fact of the matter’s it still _happened_.”

“You come around to language as best you can, even when – what does your Grandin say? Even when it’s not your first way of thinking. And it seems these studied fellows didn’t want to think about people that didn’t come to words first thing. That have a life of experiences that’s not so neatly written.”

“Didn’t even include us as outliers.”

“Utter rubbish and tosh if it wasn’t so fascinating.”

Dawn listened as they kept talking – about language, and thinking, and how when she and Dawn had been out on their walk that afternoon, Dru had been hoping the trees would whisper to her. They’d been whispering nicely a few weeks earlier, but they’d been so quiet lately, she even missed them being nasty. No little stories about learning how to lie, or how good it felt to sleep beneath the soil, not even hissing at her for days on end when they couldn’t make up their minds to be friendly or cruel. But they’d been nice to look at even if they’d been quiet, just making the usual sounds of leaves shaking and wood creaking as they moved in the wind. Spike told her about some of what he’d seen at work today, things he’d saved up for her now that they were alone. No sex noises. A little kissing, but Spike and Dru always kissed. Mostly it was talking. Lots of talking. They’d talked that morning and through dinner and were still going at it. Because they liked talking to each other.

She inched her way back to bed, glancing into the spare hobby room as she went – mostly at the other set of bookshelves she’d have to take a look at – and crawling back under the covers. She couldn’t hear them, but she could imagine it going on for a while. And she didn’t need to be the last one awake.


	7. I’ll stand outside your window like a violent man

Dawn expected Spike and Dru to take advantage of the weekend to sleep. Which they did, technically, by staying in bed until six-thirty. That was when kitchen sounds and smells that would’ve gotten her out of bed and onto her feet any day of the week prodded her upright, and she sat down to pancakes already plated up for her, studded with Spike’s leftover-from-campus berries and fruits, rendering syrup superfluous and unnecessary for current optimal pancake experience. But it wasn’t a leisurely pancake-and-lounge-around morning. There was work to be done. Plans to be made.

“Cucumbers?” Spike asked, scribbling at a little spiral notepad.

“Yes.” Dru sat down next to him at the kitchen table and sipping another mug of tea. Dawn was just finishing up putting the bed back and stopped to watch them. “What about carrots?”

“Still got some from last week. Onions?”

“Of course. And honey.”

“Double the eggs.” He reached over with his right hand to scratch her between her shoulders while he kept on writing. She made a happy little sound and leaned into the scratching.

“Remind me, are we in season for elephant hearts?”

“Should be, should be. We’ll see if there’s any around. That’s about it, then. Dawn? You good to go?”

She was, so they all were. And that was all they said to each other for most of the walk over. After last night, she’d expected them to keep the conversation going, maybe moving onto something about music theory and linguistic development or why some languages had _the_ as a word. Except they didn’t. They kept pace with each other, stopping and checking for cars at the same time, and they didn’t say anything. If Dawn talked to them, they talked to her; when she asked them a question, they discussed an answer and went right back to being quiet. 

It was weird how it didn’t feel weird. Not after she got used to it. They weren’t looking at each other, but they weren’t not looking at each other, either. Not like how people on the bus didn’t look at or talk to each other. More like how – more like how she’d just wanted to be in the same room as Buffy, and as Mom, except this time, for them, the not-looking wasn’t because they had to be close but couldn’t bring themselves to look at each other. The not-looking was just how they were. Like they didn’t need to check all the time to make sure the other one was there.

She’d checked. Glancing up and back at the hospital machines, at the person in the bed or sitting right next to her. Buffy told her when Mom had been on the couch, before they’d moved her, she’d had a hard time looking at her. She hadn’t been able to focus her eyes on the whole thing. On the body. She hadn’t wanted Dawn to see her, as a body; when she saw Dawn looking at the body in the morgue, she hadn’t said anything. Just let her look. It wasn’t until after that they’d talked.

When Mom was in the coffin and dressed up all nice for everyone to say goodbye, Dawn understood: she’d almost seen someone dead before. Someone freshly died and newly dead. She’d come close. Another hour and she would have. Buffy hadn’t wanted her to see Mom like that, like a body, because after she’d almost found Buffy, she thought it would’ve been too much.

Maybe it made sense that it was someone who’d almost died was the one that found the body.

Except they’d talked _so much_ last night, and now they weren’t saying anything to each other. She knew Spike didn’t always look at people. But the not talking wasn’t something she was used to from him. 

Dawn had seen the downtown farmers market plenty of times, sometimes stopping to grab a snack, but she’d never gone there for groceries, and never first thing in the morning. Spike and Dru did, every week. When the three of them arrived, the place was busy as she’d ever seen it. Kids running around, people fighting for parking space at the bike racks, a couple people pulling wagons, plenty of dogs. Free samples all over the place, and wouldn’t you know it, elephant hearts weren’t Dru being her usual crazy self but a kind of plum. The farmer handed Dawn a slice – pulled out her knife and cut one open right then and there, dark red juice dripping down the blade and offering the ruby-bright fruit to her right from the sharp end – that she jammed into her mouth and the flavor of spicy jewels exploded all over her tongue. Not that she knew what jewels tasted like. Just, she knew that if they tasted like anything, they tasted like these plums.

Dru and Spike weren’t here for the free samples, though. They’d come on a mission, with objectives and goals to complete, and split up to cover more ground. Dawn found herself tagging along after Dru, who was gently hefting eggplants up and down to judge them fit to take home, while Spike went off to get the other half of the grocery list.

“Hey,” she said, sidling up to Dru’s elbow. “Can I ask you something?”

“I shouldn’t see why not.”

“It’s – if you don’t want to answer, it’s okay. I don’t know if it’d be – right. Last night, you and Spike were talking, and I heard you –”

“Oh!” She whipped around to look at Dawn, eyes open and a hand up in front of her mouth. “We didn’t keep you awake, did we?”

“No, no you didn’t. I was already awake, and I just had to get up and, um. Do my business. And I heard you two talking. Not what you said! Just you talking.” Dru nodded. “And you’re not talking to each other now. I was just worrying, I guess, because sometimes when there’s not a lot of talking it can mean…”

She trailed off at Dru’s smile. She stopped entirely with Dru’s hand cupping her cheek and the warm look in her eyes. The way she was looking at her like she really liked Dawn.

“No need to worry, little sweetheart.” She patted Dawn’s cheek and rested her hand against it in a way that should’ve been infuriating but somehow wasn’t. Maybe because of all the fondness in her voice. “Sometimes there isn’t much to say, is all. It’s true there’s times words depart from us, much as we need them, and there’s also times we’ve no use for them, so we get by without them for a while.” Her hand moved to Dawn’s shoulder. “It’s brave of you to voice your fears to us, and I’ll assay it a sign of trust. Now let me pay it back in kind, and tell you there’s nothing you need be concerned about. We’ve made our own way together, Spike and I, as best we can. We’ll keep at it until we’re done. Not with each other, mind you. Until we’re done.”

“Oh.” Dru’s speech settled into Dawn’s head, righting itself into regular speech patterns. “Oh! Thanks. I mean, thank you for telling me. I know I shouldn’t be worried, but I couldn’t really help it. So I’m glad it’s fine between you guys and it was just me being worried.”

“I shouldn’t be so hasty there.” Dru went back to judging eggplants. “If you’ve been worried, it does one well to consider where the worry had its beginnings.”

_It’d just been me being paranoid because I’m so used to being cut out of things and people being cagey and quiet I wanted to really, really make sure it was just me this time._

Spike bought them all focaccia for lunch. They ate it at home, with sandwiches made with the sliced meats left over from the night before. He’d started talking again at the market, here and there. Things like checking with Dru about how big a chicken they needed to buy and seeing if Dawn wanted any of the honeys at the beekeeper stand. Asking for information, not starting up a conversation again. She tried starting one with him, but it didn’t get more than half a block.

“Can I borrow one of your bikes for a while?” she asked, when Spike was clearing the table.

“If you like,” Dru said. That was it: _if you like_ , no interrogation about where she might be going or why she wanted to borrow it to begin with. Just, we trust you. Which was, after just a second to think about it, way more terrifying than any line of questioning.

It was a lot of why she clipped on the borrowed helmet before she pedaled off on Dru’s bike, out into Sunnydale the way it was supposed to be seen. And the moment she pushed off in the parking lot, she was suddenly back home. It hadn’t been real until she’d gotten on a bike and started really moving through town. A little bit of independence: not relying on anyone else to get around, nobody around watching her. She biked in San Diego, and she had plenty of time by herself, but now she was back home and moving, and now it felt real that she was here. This was how she always moved through Sunnydale, legs pumping up and down, adjusting her feet so the pedals hit the arches just so. She leaned forward over the handlebars and lifted her left hand in a fist to say _I’m turning right_ before heading up Sixth.

There weren’t a lot of cars or people around, not in this part of town this time of day this day of the week this time of year. It meant not being that worried about always keeping her eyes open for bike and car traffic and being able to look up and see what was around her.

Dawn hadn’t been away long enough for stuff to get changed and different from what she’d known when she left. It wasn’t like there’d been any big construction projects going on when she’d moved to San Diego – no new movie theaters or office buildings or knocking down the old gas station on L Street to put something else up where it’d been. There wasn’t much to notice, which meant there was everything to look at. There was the bamboo running up along the driveway of the one house with the glass front door, there was the owl box up in the big oak right at the corner in the park, there was the turn if she’d wanted to go to Janice’s after school.

She held her left arm out straight to say _I’m turning left_ and went the other way. Away from the way to Janice’s house. Because that’s not where she was going. _Not that way_ was all she had to go on, and it was all she’d do. Go some other way. Squeeze the handbrakes and check the light and when there weren’t any cars coming through pedal fast through the intersection.

There were parts of town she could almost bike through blindfolded and parts she’d never been to – she didn’t know _every_ block in Sunnydale, just something like half of them. She could find her way around back to Spike and Dru’s without any problems but right now she wanted to get as lost as she could. She didn’t know those bushes by those offices or those paths off the sidewalk and over the lawn. She didn’t know those fences or that driveway or that new-filled-in pothole, a different shade of black than the rest of the street. Before she’d moved away she’d tried riding through as much Sunnydale as she could, but she hadn’t had enough time to see everything. She’d wanted to live here long enough to take it for granted. She’d only lived here long enough to miss it so much she’d run away to get lost in it again. And it wasn’t a big enough town to get lost in, because eight blocks, two more right turns and a left, and she was on her way home.

And she wouldn’t have stopped for a million dollars. She couldn’t make herself. Her brain was off. She wasn’t even thinking, just feeling her body move, just sensing the idea of what was going to happen. And then it happened.

1630 Revello Drive.

Just like she’d left it.

Okay, not _exactly_ like she’d left it on the day Jeanine packed all Dawn’s boxes in the moving van and driven her off with Buffy and Dad staying there for another couple of weeks to deal with the last of the paperwork and finish up the estate sale. The car in the driveway was different. The hedges up front were replanted. The mailbox had changed. But the house itself – that was still her house. It wasn’t the house she’d grown up in, not exactly, but it was the house she’d done more growing up in than anywhere else. 

Dawn didn’t get off the bike. She just rested one foot on the sidewalk with the other still on the pedal, staring at the house from the opposite side of the street. She had her old housekeys with her. She’d never taken them out of her backpack. If whoever still lived there hadn’t changed the locks, she could walk right in. But then she’d have to see what else had changed. They’d gotten rid of Mom’s desk. They’d gotten rid of all the furniture. Maybe they didn’t even have kids in the house, whoever was living there.

She could bike over right now and ring the doorbell.

She stayed looking at it on the sidewalk.

It wasn’t like she’d wanted to live in Sunnydale all her life from now on. It’d just been that her going was so fast. Not like Mom and Dad’s divorce, where she and Buffy had been a part of it all. Not like moving to Sunnydale, where it’d been a big shift but it’d been a big shift after a lot of little ones with time to get used to the idea and everything. It’d been maybe a month from Mom dying and moving in with Dad.

And it wasn’t like she’d wanted to _stay_ in the house. She still didn’t want to live in it anymore.

She just wanted to be able to know it was her saying good-bye. Not Dad’s decision. Not Buffy pushing her out for her own good because no way did she want to be in that house a second more than she had to. Her by herself. Saying good-bye.

So she whispered it to anyone who was listening. She got up on Dru’s bike and started heading away. And this time, she didn’t have to look back.


	8. I think about you when the road went wrong

She took a long route back to the apartment, not hurrying to get there, taking lefts and rights at random – the apartment wasn’t going anywhere, Sunnydale wasn’t going anywhere, but she didn’t want to stop moving. She even took a right on J Street to bike past her old middle school, just for a few more blocks of biking. When she finally locked up the bike and knocked on the front door, Dru was the one who let her in. 

“I take it that the afternoon’s gone agreeably with you.”

“Yeah, I guess it was nice.”

“It’s that you’ve got a light about you that wasn’t present when you’d departed. You’ve got the face of someone who’s left something heavy behind. It’s good to see on you.” She glanced around the apartment, at Dawn and down the hallway, then shrugged and went back towards the bedroom. Dawn followed her, glancing at the closed second bedroom door as they passed. Dru settled into the armchair in the corner, pulling her feet up underneath her on the cushion. “Not that I’d be so demanding as to ask what it was that you’ve removed from your life. It’s not my business to inquire on such particulars. But, as I’ve said, it’s nice to see that you’ve unencumbered yourself.”

Dawn nodded, self-conscious about not having taken off her shoes. “I guess it did work out pretty well. There’s some stuff I wasn’t able to do in San Diego, and I guess – I mean, thanks for lending me your bike so I could do it.”

“You’re most welcome.” She leaned over and grabbed a book off the nightstand, and settling into reading. Dawn waited a minute, then carefully exited the room. The couch beckoned, and so did the kettle, but if she wanted to use that she’d be better off asking permission – and if she wanted an honest answer, she’d be better off not asking Dru about it.

So she knocked on the second bedroom door.

When she didn’t get an answer, she knocked again.

_Maybe he’s just not home and Dru didn’t say because she didn’t think it was relevant. If that’s the case, then –_

“What’s it you need?” Spike didn’t sound angry, or even cross, as he might say – annoyed was close, and he looked it, too, keeping his distance from her inside the room. She tried peering around, then gave up.

“Can I use the electric kettle to make tea?”

“Are you – it’s a bloody electric kettle, a trained monkey could operate it.” He shook his head and let go of the door. “Sorry. Yes, you can use it. Just don’t go scalding yourself.”

“Thanks.” He didn’t notice the sarcasm, instead going right back to the computer and putting some headphones on. Dawn braced herself to head out and maybe make a cup of something black, then relaxed and looked around. _Might as well grab the chance_. More bookcases, of freaking course – not as many as in the bedroom, and not as many books on them, either. It looked like they kept the fiction in here along with a computer, on a desk off in the corner. Spike had pretty much tuned her out the moment he sat down, clicking away at the left-handed mouse. “What’ve you got there?”

“Private business. Personal business. Why do you care?” He sighed and took the headphones off. “Look, I’m busy with this right now. I’ll tell you later, all right? Just ask me when I’m done.”

“Fine.” She let more anger into her voice than she’d wanted, but, again, it didn’t seem like Spike noticed. So Dawn let herself notice the computer, and that it didn’t look as nice as Dad’s. She let herself notice the desk, which wasn’t as nice as the one in the bedroom: it looked more like something that came from an office, not someone’s house. She looked at the CDs taking up rack after rack and shelf after shelf on the other side of the room, plus a stack of them on the desk by the wall. Also, at the speakers on the desk, and the stereo set up against the far wall. The wall to the outside, on the second floor, where the music could go the loudest if he wanted it.

“Hey, you want me to make you some? I mean, as long as I’m boiling the water anyway.”

“Ah – yeah, sure, if you’re offering. Ta.” He still didn’t look her way, but at least he wasn’t snapping. Which she _knew_ wasn’t her, it wasn’t because of anything she’d done, it was her coming into what he’d been doing at a bad time. It still stung. And since he’d said yes to her offer, she felt obligated to follow through on it.

She made them both cups of some sort of green tea, little spiral leaves that smelled like clean lawns and was right on the gentle side of bitter. She didn’t bother knocking, just opened the door, walked over, and handed him the mug. At least he thanked her.

He took a sip, and so did she. He took another, and then she said, “Nice computer.”

The headphones came off again. “What?”

“I said, nice computer.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Didn’t get it. Built it.” He clicked away and set the mug down to use both hands. “Got the monitor from some professor’s office when he retired, grabbed the keyboard and mouse from some dorm’s move-out week, put the rest of it together from spare parts.”

“Nice,” Dawn said, lying as best she could. It was pretty nice that he’d built it himself and it looked pretty good and seemed to be working okay, but – _They never buy stuff. They get paychecks now, why don’t they buy stuff?_ “So are you done yet?”

“Nope,” he said, still typing.

“I’ll go away if you tell me,” she half-joked, pulling one out of the little sister arsenal.

“Pull up a chair,” Spike replied.

“I’ll stop _asking_ if you tell me.”

“I’ll be done faster the sooner you let me see to this.”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

Dawn wrapped her hands around the mug and waited. Spike went on with whatever he was doing, sometimes licking his lips at what he read on the screen, all his focus off the other human in the same room. The music coming out of the headphones wasn’t loud enough for her to make out the lyrics, just that there was some music playing. She pulled a CD off the shelf, not really looking at it, except to see that it had a used bin price sticker on the back corner. The next one had one, too, and a few had others to say they hadn’t come home new. A couple were missing the little liner notes, just CDs in a case. She looked at the shelf, then took a step back to get a better view of how many CDs Spike had amassed in the last couple of years since moving in. And the books, she couldn’t forget the books, not when they were all over the apartment. They’d almost all come used, too.

_Okay, so they buy things like books. Just not stuff if they don’t have to. Like food, and keyboards._

Closing the door behind her, gulping down the last mouthful of tea in the hallway, she looked around the apartment and thought, _If I spent years not having any money, I wouldn’t want to spend it much, either._

It kept rolling around in her head through dinner, after dinner, all through Spike’s evening cigarette. Maybe she was already getting used to it, but the evening cigarette break was starting to seem like a good idea. Not that she had plans to start smoking. Just the break itself. Head out for a few minutes of what used to be fresh air and clear her head.

“So what were you doing on the computer?”

“Chatting with people,” Spike told her. “Seeing how their days’ve gone, checking in on things, nothing too exciting.”

“Arguing with people,” Dru told her, having left Spike behind to finish up his cancer stick by himself. “Bandying on about what’s happening in shows and serials he doesn’t follow firsthand.” 

“You mean like soap operas?” Dawn vaguely remembered Spike talking to Mom about them a couple of times. “People on the internet argue about soap operas?”

“They’re hardly the worst source of friendly disagreement. He’d gotten himself hooked into them while we’d been cleaning houses, ignoring the hoovering to listen in, and I didn’t want to see any risks to that sort of distraction happening again.” She giggled. “Why might you think we don’t keep a telly? Rid yourself of the source’s root cause and avoid the temptation entirely. But please, be gentle and don’t tease him on it. He gets so tender about the subject.”

“Okay, now I’m wondering how he can argue about shows he doesn’t even watch.”

Dru shrugged. “He reads the magazines.”

“Yeah, I’m so not even _talking_ to him about that.”

“I expect that should suit him as well.” She began unloading the dishwasher. Dawn leaned back against the counter, then slipped back outside. Instead of taking a direct route to the side lot, where she assumed Spike was still smoking, she took a left turn instead, heading out to the street. Not to head out far. Just to go a couple blocks over and really be somewhere that nobody knew where she was.

Dawn didn’t like asking Spike or Dru about what they’d done in between coming to Sunnydale and – well, whatever their lives had been before they’d started the paths that’d _taken_ them to Sunnydale. She knew enough to know it wasn’t boring, not even looking back on it.

Buffy didn’t talk much about her depression, which was – not fine, not really, but Dawn knew if she was honest and careful, Buffy might give her a little. She’d said before there wasn’t really much to talk about. It warped the world and cut you off from it and it was, once you were out of it and looking back, pretty boring.

She’d wanted to ask Mom about why she’d split with Dad. She knew some of the details, and that the two of them didn’t want to be married anymore, and Buffy’s suicide attempt was basically the world-shattering event that laid bare all the faults and struggles that’d been hiding in the better times. But she’d wanted to know why. She knew she couldn’t get the whole thing from Dad. Asking Mom would’ve helped put things together. Build the world up from enough points of view to make a complete picture.

Maybe Buffy knew. If Dawn could figure out how to ask her, she would. When she got back.

Three blocks away from the apartment, Dawn hesitated, then stopped and looked up. It hit her that it was quiet enough she couldn’t hear anyone, and that Sunnydale was empty enough there wasn’t anyone for her to hear. They kept the lights on, though. The traffic light slid from red to green to yellow as she stood and watched, and when it hit red again, she checked both ways and crossed against the light.

_First crossing against the light, next step shoplifting? Maybe that’s how it goes._

She didn’t check the light, just the traffic, then sighed and sprinted across in the middle of the block. Sunnydale was basically _dead_ in summertime, everyone either at home from college or not being out at all, especially in the residential areas. Maybe in what passed for downtown, there’d still be people around the coffee shop. But right now, right here, it was just Dawn walking in the middle of the street, looking around and being quietly alone.

She stopped and inspected her hand underneath the streetlight. The city council or planning committee or whoever it was had picked an off-yellow bulb that burned so brightly it ran right through the spectrum. It was illuminating, all right, but it wasn’t anything close to approximating actual sunlight. It made her skin look fake, like it didn’t really fit on her body. Standing right underneath the streetlamp where cars were supposed to go, she barely had a shadow. All the shadow she had was what was right beneath her feet and if she jumped – which she did, a few times, to see the little bit of darkness her body made when she went right up, when she threw out her arms, when she kicked out her legs like she was a dancer.

Dawn hopped up onto the sidewalk, then spun around and went back to the street.

It wasn’t like she didn’t have her bike in San Diego. It wasn’t a huge city, but it was big enough she could get away from where she lived and everyone she knew without much work. She just couldn’t get away from everyone. Not back there. Being outside right now and having someone asleep in the house across the street was different than trying to get away from people in a big, crowded park or on the beach. Even if there wasn’t anyone around, she wasn’t really isolated. Out here, it was only her.

She looked at the sky, the stars almost all drowned out even when she shaded her eyes and squinted. Nobody around that she could see or hear. She took a deep breath and let the cool air hit the back of her throat, the faded smell of heat and dust gone with the sun. What came in with the night time was still air and all the little scents that got lost with everyone out driving. The dirt, the grasses. Trees that always swayed and shook gently that she couldn’t have heard until now, with the dark taking away everything that distracted her. Maybe if she stood right underneath a tree in San Diego, she could hear it. But she’d be worrying about who was around watching her, or not watching her. Having to get back home eventually – which she worried about now, sure, but not the same way as she would’ve with home being hundreds of miles away.

Everyone expected her to have something to say. Everybody wanted her to talk. Mom had been dead for months now, and there still wasn’t anything she could say about it. Dawn didn’t want people to ask her to say something, but she didn’t want people to not ask her anything, and there wasn’t any in-between. There was no making it better. Easier, maybe. But no better. Not the way better usually worked.

She looked up at the stars and the streetlights, down the road at the trees lit up into arboreal ghosts, slowly turned around and began making her way back to the apartment. She’d gone three blocks, down two, back up, and now she was…okay, not lost, just disoriented. The apartment was on D Street, and she’d gotten herself over to Eighth, and that meant she had to go _thataway_ to get back to where she’d sleep. Right down that way, which was coming up now. So many things made it different from coming the other way, not only it being night instead of day, but also the feeling of having to _go_ back, not just go towards. She kicked at a piece of gravel on the sidewalk and turned into the parking lot.

They had the same kind of off-yellow lights for the parking lot as they did for the street. The empty lot didn’t look that different now, except that she –

“I know you’ve already run away, but I’d have liked some warning you’re setting out to wander the streets at night.”

Dawn jumped, shouted, spun around, and almost fell over all at the same time. Sure, Spike didn’t have his glow-in-the-dark hair anymore, but the long, black duster helped him blend into the dark better than ever. He walked towards her, hands in his pockets, and he was coming from the sidewalk, too, not from the little side lot.

“Not that I’d be one to blame you for striking out on your own. It’s a fine evening for time alone, and I’d wager you’re safer here going out by yourself right now than anytime in the day down in the big city.”

“You still followed me.”

“I kept my distance.” She crossed her arms and he shook his head. “Look, I saw you slinking off, and I wasn’t about to leave you by yourself, no matter how safe you might’ve been.”

“I’m not going to thank you for it.”

“You don’t have to. But if you’re not heading right back in, I’m staying out here.”

“Fine.” She had been, but now she wasn’t. They ended up on the steps up to the apartment, hanging out like they were out on the back porch again, halfway to the top. Spike pulled out his cigarettes, then muttered, “Circumvent,” and put them away. Dawn wasn’t going to ask what he meant by that. She was just going to sit here until she felt as good as she had out walking down the middle of the street. The air was still the same. At least there was that. She pulled her feet up and hooked her heels against a step, like she was back on the porch, and if she closed her eyes she could set herself back to her old house, through the kitchen and the living room, up the – 

Going back down the stairs to the living room, she opened her eyes and said, “Hey, Spike?”

“Yeah?”

“You were around for the whole estate sale of all the furniture, right? You and Drusilla.”

“That we were.”

“I was just wondering.” Had been wondering for a long time and hadn’t been able to ask anyone before tonight. “I know it’s where you got that desk, but I was wondering, do you know who got the couch?” She didn’t need to say more. She knew he knew: _the_ couch. She also knew it was like her mom’s desk: it wasn’t a priceless eighteenth-century heirloom antique hand-stitched by guild craftsmen, just something bought at a good deal. Maybe someone else was out there using it without knowing. Dawn could live with someone else not knowing. But she had to know. And most of all, she knew Spike would tell her.

“Dru and I. We got it.” Spike looked out at the parking lot, hands clasped together between his knees. “Buffy let us take it gratis, once we told her what we had planned.”

“Oh.” Dawn wrapped her arms around her knees. They didn’t have it in the apartment, but maybe –

“Yeah, we borrowed a truck from someone at work, drove it out to the dump, I took an axe to it, then Dru set it on fire.”

“Oh,” she said again, but a lot less quietly.

“Buffy came and watched.”

“Really?”

“Enjoyed herself, too. We offered to let her have a go of things with the axe and the matches, but she said she’d be all right letting the two of us handle the destruction. All she wanted to do was watch.”


	9. fall on the arrows

Sunday morning wasn’t any more relaxed than Saturday’s. Breakfast was Weetabix with milk from the farmers market that came in a glass bottle, topped with the last of Spike’s party scavengings and some honey for flavor. Three bites in, Dawn finally looked up and had to double-take: Dru was wearing a long, beautiful black dress, with her hair braided up and really, _really_ good makeup. She almost tossed her bowl in the sink and kissed Spike, who was still sitting at the table and drinking his tea, full on the mouth – which was basically their version of a hug – before wishing them both a pleasant morning and dashing out the door.

“Where’s she going?” Dawn asked around her fourth bite of cereal.

“Early mass,” he said, flipping over to the next page of the Sunnydale Herald. “Had a bit of a late start this morning, so she’s got to hurry not to miss the Asperges.”

“Aspersions?”

“Holy water sprinkling. They do it before the main service – it’s got some special prayers that go with it. She likes getting it done, says it’s a good way to get ready and open herself up for the big event.”

“Are you missing it because you’ve got to be here with me?”

“What? No, I’m not. I don’t go. It’s Dru’s thing, to go. I’ll be there if she asks me to come, but otherwise I leave her to it.”

“Right.” Dawn let a blueberry burst between her front teeth, crunching down on the itty-bitty seeds. “At a Friends meeting, you just show up.”

“Do you now.” He looked up from the newspaper.

“There’s a time it’s all supposed to start. It’s not really a thing like Mass, or the Amidah, where there’s stuff you say or prayers you sing because there’s no singing or prayers. But you show up and everyone goes to the room at the same time, or if you’re late you come in and sit down, and it’s all quiet. You don’t say anything. Nobody’s got to say anything if there’s nothing to say. You come in and sit down and you just listen to what’s in your head and if there’s something that God says to you, then it’s fine, because you’re supposed to be ready and open to hearing God. If God doesn’t say something to you that’s not a bad thing because maybe you don’t need to hear anything. And there’s nobody to say it’s all done and over with because there’s nobody who says it’s time to start, you just sit and find a way to get yourself together in your head, and it’s just…” _It’s just nice to be around people that don’t expect anything from me._

Spike hadn’t looked away from her. He just nodded slowly, almost smiling. “Pretty sure there’s a Quaker meeting on campus sometimes. You plan on staying here much longer, I’ll be happy to look into it for you.”

“That’s okay. But thanks.”

“All right.” He sipped his tea. “Don’t ever think we’re not happy to see you. We are, tremendously so at that. We’re touched you thought of us as a suitable place to run away to. But we can’t keep you here forever. You know that, yeah?”

“I know.”

“I’m not telling you head back home this very instant. I’m saying, you’ll need to leave sometime. You can’t keep calling your friend every three days and keep the cover story going. The world’s going to catch up to you. More importantly, Buffy’s going to catch on.” Dawn nodded and murmured out some sounds to show she was listening. “We’re happy to let you hide out with us, and we’ll find you a meeting if you need one, but we’re going to say good-bye to you sometime. Much as we’ll miss you, I don’t want you to think otherwise.”

“Yeah.” It hurt to hear it, and it felt good, too. Like the ache of coming out of the water after swimming for hours.

“Right, then. Seeing as it’s laundry day, anything you want washed, let me know, so I can get to it with everything,” he said, whiplash-fast back to regular daily conversation.

“No, I don’t think I do.”

“No need to be shy. Not like I haven’t laundered your unmentionables before.”

“Ew! Spike, that’s –” But he was grinning, and suddenly, so was she. “Okay, yeah. But no, I think I’m good.”

“Suit yourself.”

It being laundry day meant that even if she’d only been using them for three nights, they still stripped the sheets off the sofa bed to clean and switch them out for fresh ones. Because laundry day meant everything. All the towels, all the sheets, all the t-shirts and jeans and socks and underwear. No sniff-tests in case something could go another couple of days. No waiting until Dawn had been there at least a week. Everything got sorted out in the apartment, stuffed in a hamper, and lugged down the one flight of stairs and around to the other wing of the apartment building and the little laundry room. Spike managed it with minimal grunting, the book he’d carried under one arm set down safely before methodically inspecting each washer and dryer and lint trap for – well, knowing him, stuff people had left behind or forgotten.

She couldn’t resist, though: “It’s usually houses you have to check for ghosts, not major appliances.”

“Hey, sometimes there’s money in these.” He slid the lint trap back. “Earrings, a few times. I figure, serves them right for not checking their pockets.”

After he finished examining every cranny and nook, and all the laundry was loaded up and churning away, he went back outside, leaned against the nearest piece of wall, and started reading. Dawn sidled up next to him as best she could, pulled out her own book, and that was that. After they transferred everything into the dryers, he went back to reading, with Dawn going off to kick around at the edge of the empty lot and check out a few of the pebbles. After they took everything upstairs, Dawn followed Spike into the bedroom and sat on the bed to start matching up socks while he sorted the t-shirts.

“Can we see Mom today?”

He stopped for a moment, then went back to folding. “Sure thing, pet. We’ll wait until Dru gets back, then make an outing of it. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds like a plan.”


	10. got to keep faith that your past won’t change

If she’d come a day or two earlier, or said she’d wanted to see Mom the night she arrived, one of them could’ve arranged to borrow a car – maybe from someone at work, maybe from another person in their building, but a vehicle large enough to carry all three of them. Or gone ahead and rented Dawn a bike for the weekend from one of the downtown stores. As it was, it seemed appropriate to set off to the cemetery on foot for reasons Dawn couldn’t explain, other than it’d give her time to think about where she was going.

“Been thinking about a motorbike,” Spike said as he locked the door behind them. “Might be nice to travel a bit, head off for a weekend somewhere.”

“It’s a big buy,” Dawn said. She’d gotten dressed up as best she could, taking a quick shower and letting Dru braid her hair and Spike paint her nails. It would’ve been nice to put on a dress or something, but she hadn’t packed anything, and nothing Dru had would’ve fit her. So she’d just let them work her over from both sides at once, sitting at the kitchen table while Spike blew on her fingers to dry them faster and Dru ran her hands over Dawn’s scalp to separate out the strands to pleat them nicely.

Spike lent her a bracelet, and Dru let her borrow a necklace. Dru kept her church dress on and Spike changed into a better cut of black jeans, and as soon as he’d draped his coat over his shoulders – because even on the hot, sunny July day with no clouds in sight, by golly, he was wearing that coat – they were off.

Maybe if she still lived in Sunnydale, she wouldn’t have felt the need for it. She’d just go see Mom when she needed to, no matter how she was dressed. But coming from so far away, and not seeing her for – after not _visiting_ her for several months, it seemed better to make a little effort to look nice.

“You could just keep borrowing people’s trucks,” she continued.

“No, the need’s for independence. Nowhere else is that more notable than the luxury of open movement. Your own feet, your own vehicle. Set off as you like, where you want, without the need to head back early just to return it to its owner when you’re the one who keeps it.” Dru sighed. “And here’s our longing for journeys again.”

“All I was thinking was somewhere in wine country,” Spike said, holding Dru’s hand while they walked. “New trees, new hills. We never quite made it there, love. Could see about a holiday there sometime for the two of us. Might even trash a hotel room for old time’s sake.”

“Wouldn’t be as much fun without our old friends, but I’ll grant you, a change of scenery might be nice for a time.”

“I’m pretty sure you can take the train there,” Dawn said.

“Not quite what we’re after when you’re on a journey with a hard-set schedule,” Dru said.

“Still, good to keep in mind, if it’s mostly the scenery we’re after,” Spike said.

“Perhaps,” Dru said.

“Could just _rent_ a motorbike,” Spike said.

“Perhaps indeed,” Dru said, smiling.

The walk to the cemetery wasn’t one Dawn had ever made before. She knew the direct driving route from Revello Drive, and how to get there from just about anywhere in Sunnydale – but this was her first actual, on-her-feet trip out there from any starting point. Starting at Spike and Dru’s apartment didn’t make much difference, when she’d never done it any other way. The whole thing felt new, even going by stuff she’d seen a million times already: that one office complex on the corner with the palm trees by the parking lot, that one curved street that went past the Co-Op that they took so Dru could buy a bouquet. Railroad tracks, where she always looked to see if there was a car crossing on the overpass at the same she was. That one house hidden by bushes and trees and that other house with gravel and rocks and spiney grass instead of a lawn. One of the town’s little parks that had a merry-go-round on the playground. The strip mall with the good thrift store and the town’s best pizzeria. More houses, more apartments, more Sunnydale than she was used to, because just as LA was a city meant for the car, Sunnydale was a town meant for the bike.

And then they were there. Right there, across the street. Wait for the light to turn and cross. Walk up the block, past the oleander blossoms, and make a left into Sunnydale’s one cemetery.

“Used to be, everyone came to these for family outings,” Spike said to nobody in particular as they made their way to Mom. “Bring the kids, have a picnic, spend an afternoon walking through the graves. They were city parks, places to spend a nice afternoon. Green grass, tall trees. Didn’t matter you were in a cemetery. It was understood, that, and it was allowed. Didn’t have to be so frightened of the reminder of the inevitable. We spend too much time trying to forget about death these days.”

_Not everyone_ , thought Dawn. “Maybe we should work harder to remember it,” she said.

“Though to be fair to us all this modern age, there’s far less dying of unknown causes,” said Dru, as they made their way down the rows. “Known causes aplenty, but unknown ones, there’s hardly any left.”

“No kids dying from working eighteen hours a day in factories,” Dawn said as they passed by a plinth dwarfed by sycamores.

“No one sent to the seashore for a long rest cure when a course of antibiotics does the same in hardly any time at all,” said Spike as they walked past the little columbarium with its bushes and benches. “These days, someone dies, you’re usually able to find out why.”

They’d told her and Buffy it was over by the time she’d lain down on the couch. That unless someone could read the future better than any deck of Tarot cards, nobody could’ve done anything. Even though someone had been there with her in the house that morning, even though Buffy had been right there, it’d been over too suddenly for anything to change it. She’d died in an instant. Everyone said they’d had more good months with her than if her cancer had just killed her first thing, and at least it was over too quick for any suffering. Just her death.

Knowing exactly what killed Mom, what made her die, what made her stop being alive, helped a little bit. It wasn’t just the end that came to everyone everywhere: it was something that would’ve happened to Mom, just to Mom, and there hadn’t been anything anyone could’ve done to hold it off for even a couple of days. No scans or tests, no blood thinners or steroids. Mom died because that was what was going to happen. Some people got old. Some people got sick. Some people had blood vessels burst in their brains.

And then they got buried.

Mom’s grave was something she’d picked out the first time she’d gotten sick. _Maybe, and maybe not. But if it is that maybe, I’ll feel better knowing I’ve done this,_ she’d said to Buffy as Dawn listened from the top of the stairs. It was a simple grave, no plantings or benches, just a spot of open grass and a headstone – her name, two dates, beloved mother and friend and a couple lines from a song she’d liked. Dawn remembered her singing it in the car, sitting up front with her one day. They’d been driving home from her swim lessons and she’d felt so grown-up for sitting in the front seat with Mom, and so happy there wasn’t anyone in the car who’d tell her what tapes she couldn’t pick. Mom said she could play anything she wanted, and Dawn put the tape in side-two up. She remembered the tape’s hiss before the song began, how she’d realized she’d put it in the wrong side first, and the way Mom recognized the song instead of the mistake and started singing without even thinking about it. Because she’d been happy and wanted to sing.

Dru silently handed the bouquet to Dawn. “Thanks,” she said, but didn’t move forward. It didn’t weigh much, but she couldn’t put it down. She took a deep breath and tried to move her arms. They didn’t budge. “You know Jews leave stones at graves instead of flowers? Willow told me at the funeral. Jews leave stones because they’re more solid than flowers and more people see that someone went to visit the grave.”

“Thought you were a Quaker,” Spike said.

“I’m not. Not yet. I haven’t converted or anything. But I was – it’s for the living, all the stuff we do. Flowers and stones and graves aren’t for the people who’ve gone. They’re for whoever’s still here. I know I’m not Jewish but I’ll know I did this.” She couldn’t look at Spike or Dru as she put the bouquet down at the foot of her mother’s headstone, then reached down into the bottom of her pockets and placed the pebbles from the lot on top of it. She stood up and didn’t look at them, just at the headstone, just at the flowers and her pebbles, just at Spike’s coat and Dru’s hands. “Mom wouldn’t have cared. I mean, that I’m not Jewish and I’m still doing this. She’d have said something about anthropology and traditions and borrowing what feels right as long as you borrow with dignity and respect, and…I was thinking, I haven’t been here since I left, and I’m glad you thought to get flowers, I’m really glad you did, but I wanted to do something myself, so when I leave I’ll be able to say that was me doing it, that was me doing something so people will know someone came to see Mom. Because even if they don’t care, I’ll know what I did.” She swallowed out the tightness in her throat and pulled the tears back from her eyes.

“Would you like me to give her a prayer?” Dru asked. “Something for the memories, while we’re all here.”

“If you want to.”

“It’s only a small part of the larger whole. But I think on it often, when I think on those no longer in my life. In our lives, I should say, for the present company.” She hummed to herself and began reciting: “Months or years may have passed, yet we feel near to them. Our hearts yearn for them. Though the bitter grief has softened, a duller pain abides, for the place where once they stood is empty now. The links of life are broken, but the links of love and longing cannot break.”

“Thanks,” Dawn said, as close to normal as she could. It still came out as a squeak.

Spike made a little noise, almost agreeing with her. “There’s a poem I know that…” He looked in her direction, head cocked to the side, and then his eyes seemed to focus in on her face. He made another little noise, then turned to Dru and said, “You know, love, I could do with a smoke about now. And it wouldn’t do to smoke right in here. Wouldn’t want to disturb anyone while they’re paying their respects. I’d best head back out a while. Care to keep me company?”

“As you so wish, my darling.” She offered him her arm and he took it, the two of them striding out of the cemetery, leaving Dawn alone with her mother.

_For him, that’s really subtle,_ Dawn thought, and giggled. And since it was just her by herself, she wiped the trembling tears out from the corners of her eyes and the snot out from her nose. No need to bother with a tissue or hankie. Just let the bodily fluids flow without trying to stop them. And laugh a little when she thought about how Mom would’ve had something around because moms always did. They knew people needed tissues and hankies at graveyards and cemeteries when they saw someone they loved, and when she thought, _I’ll tell her I’ll remember_ , Dawn felt herself laughing and crying, a bit of both at the same time.

It felt good to get everything out of her. Like she was wringing out her guts and putting everything back in wrinkled and dry – messy but not so heavy anymore. 

The day Mom died, at home after school, Willow told her about shiva. How Jews had a specific time right after the death of someone to sit around and grieve. There was more to it than that, stuff about mirrors and clothes and boxes – she’d have to check on it later – but what Dawn liked most about the whole idea of the event, what she wished she’d had herself, was the time to just _be sad._

It wasn’t like they’d expected her to not be sad. Her mom was dead. Of course she was sad. It was that as soon as the funeral was over, when she was down in the ground, it was only a few more days before she was off in San Diego, and a couple more after that when she was out in another school. There’d only been two months left of eighth grade; she could’ve skipped them and gone right onto ninth in fall. And sure, keeping moving and keeping busy was better than falling into sadness and stillness. But to just let the sadness be there – she would’ve liked that. Not to fight it, not to worry about it, not to try to feel better. Just to have it around at the time for being sad. 

_I wanted time to be sad._

Buffy hadn’t really wanted time to be sad. But Buffy had been so busy with everything – Mom’s death was almost all her responsibility, and for a while, Dawn had been, too. She’d pulled an incomplete for college when Mom got sick and was ready to head back when she’d died. It’d only gotten worse for her when Dawn needed someone to take care of her, while Dad needed Buffy’s help to take care of everything. And Buffy had worked so hard for her, she’d been so hard to be around, and she hadn’t had any time for any sadness, she’d kept moving because she couldn’t let herself be sad except now, except now that it was summertime and she’d start college again in fall and everything was done and she could finally stop for a while. And Dawn had left her alone because Buffy was so still it’d hurt to see her like that. It’d reminded Dawn of when Buffy had been at her outward worst.

Her most-worst of all had been when she’d been fine. Really fine. _I’d decided to kill myself,_ she’d said, _and because I’d finally figured it out and had it all planned, I felt better._

_But I stopped it._

_You did,_ she’d said. _Thank you. You saved my life. I don’t thank you enough for that._

Buffy hadn’t wanted anything like that for Dawn. So she’d kept her going, so she could keep moving. And she’d left her.

Mom wouldn’t have wanted them to leave each other.

Spike and Dru were out on the sidewalk, like they’d said. Just hanging around with nowhere they needed to go, enjoying each other’s company. He was about three-quarters of the way through the cigarette and paused in what he was saying to raise an eyebrow at Dawn. She met his gaze and moved past him to stand next to Dru.

“Ready to head back?” he asked.

“When you’re done,” she said.

“All right.”

They started off the same way they came, Spike and Dru holding hands, Dawn a little ahead because of adult supervision and narrow sidewalks. It was a nice day, like every day, the sky empty of everything but color and the heat still gentle for a little while longer before it hit its August peak. She looked around, almost crossing against the light, then thought better of it.

“If you got that motorcycle, would you ever come down and visit us?” she asked, jumping back without any worry. She couldn’t do that with anyone else.

“Probably not,” Spike said. He wasn’t angry or upset at the question. He didn’t even sound sad. Okay, maybe a little, but not a deep, heavy sad, just a little disappointed it wasn’t a thing they could do. “Could come down and see the city and see you and Buffy in the city. But us seeing you wouldn’t sit well with your Papa.”

“You got along okay at the funeral.” She was scraping the bottom of the barrel and they all knew it. 

“He didn’t know who we were to you and Buffy,” Dru said, not calling Dawn on what she was doing. That also wouldn’t happen with anyone else. Other people would call her on being unreasonable. Spike and Dru lived in a broader reality. “Just two people who were gifted with your mother’s kindness when they so badly needed such a present.”

“Yeah,” Dawn said quietly.

“But it’s true we haven’t seen that part of the state,” Spike said. “We’d been meaning to head to Los Angeles when the seasons turned, track down some old friends there, see what happened. Your mum invited us home before we managed to go. Could see what’s around there. Could make a trip of that, let some people know we’re coming ahead of time instead of surprising them.”

“We could, at that,” said Dru.

“Travel light – you don’t forget how to do that, no matter how long you’re settled, you don’t _want_ to but you don’t forget how – and see what’s up and down the state. But we might as well get a car for that, if we really want to journey around.”

“What kind of car would you want?” Dawn asked.

“Something grand,” he said.

“Something stately,” said Dru. 

“Something really _mechanical_ I could fix with my hands if need be. Like that black one over there.” He pointed at a car parked two houses down the side street they were walking past. It didn’t surprise Dawn he’d spotted it, and it did look a lot more like a grand, stately machine than the ones around it. All Dawn could say for certain is it was a big, sturdy American car that was built to do things like glide down highways and stand the test of time. The chrome helped, all sixty miles of it. The fins looked cool, too.

They took a short detour to walk past it and admire from up close, then took another turn down the nearest corner they came to. Which lead to a cul-de-sac two blocks later, so they turned around and took another turn, which eventually got them back to the grid. Dawn didn’t exactly know where they were, not specifically, since she’d never come to this part of town much, but she knew how to get back from here. And not just because it wasn’t that big a city. It was just that she really knew the town.

Maybe she’d been born in LA, but Sunnydale was really her hometown. It was where she was from more than anywhere else in the world. And it’d been good to be back long enough to really understand that.

Sunday dinner was a big, festive meal, something fitting for the day: Dru roasted a chicken and made the sides and Spike helped her out every step of the way, the two of them moving easily around each other and sharing the space. Not just helping by handing her spoons, helping her by doing half the work. Chopping and cutting and mixing and tasting – under her directions, and contributing without being asked, making sure she had everything she needed laid out to make it all easier, from the salt and oil to the dried lavender flowers that got rubbed onto the chicken with the rest of the herbs. They wouldn’t let Dawn do anything except enjoy the food. She didn’t even get to help serve dessert, which was chilled, spiked plums over vanilla ice cream. She also got offered a small drink of what went into the sauce and only hesitated for a couple of seconds before saying yes.

Small being two fingers’ worth – her own two fingers held up against the glass – of a drink that tasted like a bottled sunset. She sipped slowly to make it last.

Outside, as Spike enjoyed a cigarette and Dawn enjoyed the faint echoey feelings around through her chest that weren’t just from the alcohol, she said, “I’ll go home tomorrow.”

“Right,” he said, and took another drag. “If you’re ready to head on out, that’ll be that.”

Dawn nodded. “You’ll walk me to the station?”

“First thing in the morning.”

_First thing after your cigarette, you mean,_ she thought, but didn’t say out loud. Just leaned back and enjoyed the night.


	11. I’ll take the fall and the faultiness

After three nights in the same bed and all the walking around from the afternoon, Dawn was finally able to fall asleep easily. No pillow-flipping or lurking at bedroom doors, just good old-fashioned lights out. As with the other mornings, Spike starting the day before anyone else in the apartment. This time around, she’d slept enough to be awake enough to be amazed at just how early his days got started. 

He called into work first thing, even before any tea or cigarettes, getting the job of running away for a little while out of the way before doing anything else. He didn’t push the story, didn’t cough or moan or try to sound like he was congested: he told whoever he was talking to that he wasn’t feeling well in as British a set of words as he could, promising if he wouldn’t be in tomorrow he’d let them know tonight, and let them fill in the details themselves. 

She got her shoes on before they went out. The birds still kept their distance from her, but she didn’t mind. It wasn’t like she was trying to catch them or tame them or make some sort of ally in a quest where she’d have to take a sword up a mountain or something. She was just feeding some wild animals.

“Maybe if you stayed a while, they’d get to know you,” Spike said. “There’s a few crows on campus, they see me, they come flying down for treats.”

A few times when Mom was sick and Dawn needed a break from everything, Spike and Dru had snuck her around the university. There weren’t secret underground labs or military test ranges or anything. It was a lot of offices, a lot of classrooms, all of it boring. The excitement came from seeing the back of everything. The corridors where she’d never be allowed to go if she wasn’t being supervised by someone with keys to all the doors. The best parts of it were going up onto rooftops of the tallest buildings around Sunnydale, all eight stories of them, and being able to look down and through the town. She’d leaned over the edges and felt the wind on her face and looked down at trees and people, and felt better about none of them knowing anything going on in her life she usually wanted to scream about. Seeing the actual distance helped. It wasn’t their fault they didn’t know.

“You’ve got a fanclub,” she said.

“More of an entourage,” he said.

Dru was cooking up breakfast for everyone, fried eggs and sliced tomatoes in the same pan that she managed to get onto the slices of toast at exactly the right time for the egg to be soft and the tomato to be firm, with plenty of herbs in the oil. But she didn’t have to run off to church, so she was able to hang around and sit on the couch with Dawn while Spike got everything into the dishwasher.

“If you decide to visit us again, we’d appreciate some advance notice.”

“The next time I come over, I’ll bring you guys presents.”

“Well, then, this coming weekend would be splendid,” she said, the edges of her mouth twitching. Dawn’s went up without even thinking. “Travel safely,” she said, hugging her good-bye before she left.

Spike insisted on carrying her bag to the train station. She didn’t put up a fight about it: she hadn’t packed much, but it was still one less thing for her arms right now. It wasn’t a hugely long walk, now that she knew how it went. They took the alleyway routes, the side streets and older sidewalks that were gently curved instead of hard right angles.

“It’s weird to think that nobody knows where I am,” she said to fill the air. Except that it honestly _was_ weird. Usually people had some idea – she was in school, or at a friend’s, or at least they thought they knew the city she was in, anyway. “Okay. I mean, nobody in San Diego. Not Buffy or Dad or anyone.”

“There’s an attraction to that,” he said, coat swishing around his legs as he walked. “Though the excitement wears off after the first few years.”

“First few…oh.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“So I know you meant everything you said the other day about having experience in running away, but you’re all settled in now. You’ve both got jobs and everything.”

“What, you thought the moment we got ourselves a proper mailing address, we’d turn around and let everyone know where to find us?”

“You mean you haven’t gotten back in touch with anyone?” He laughed, a deep rumbling smoker’s chuckle that came from a place which wasn’t the source of a lot of laughter. Dawn stopped walking, and he turned to look at her staring at him. “You’re telling me your family doesn’t know where you are, and I don’t mean even just the city, I mean even the _country._ ”

“That’s the long and short of it.”

“No idea,” she said, trying to make it fit inside her head.

“Not a hint.”

“Do you at least know where they are?”

“Dawn, I don’t even know if my parents are _alive_.”

“What. What, I mean what – why?”

“Haven’t bothered to check. They were when I left England, so far as I know, they’re still around. Same with Dru’s family. We figure, we don’t go looking for them, they’re not going to come sniffing around for us. Magical thoughts rubbing into reality and all that nonsense, but it’s what kept us going.”

“Why don’t you? There’s got to be phone books you could check, maybe places you can ask without anyone. The Internet’s got to have something. It’s got everything these days.”

“Listen. We ran away without looking back – no cover stories, no friends making excuses for us, no phone calls or postcards. We were _gone_. It got easier to stay gone the longer we were away. Now, it’s gotten so easy, we can’t think how we might go about the business of returning.”

She swallowed and went back to making her way down the sidewalk, faster this time. “If I had someone in my life disappear and then come back, I’d be too happy about it to be angry.”

“It’s not anger we’re worried about. It’s been nearly twenty years since I left London.”

“Then – oh.”

“Yeah. Neither of us wants to go home to a grave.”

“But at least you’d know.”

“Can’t say it wouldn’t have made some nights easier, just knowing. But we’ve talked it over, Dru and I. We thought about it when it was just the two of us at first, when we worried she’d be committed again and I’d be arrested on God-knows-what charges the instant we came back, traveling without a passport or drug dealing or kidnapping a mentally ill patient, slap something down, wouldn’t matter what. We didn’t want to be separated, so we stayed away. Now we know there’ll be nobody clapping us in irons the second we step foot off the plane, and that’s one worry settled. It’s the rest of the uncertainties that haven’t gone away.”

“Finding out if the cat’s alive or not.”

“Bit like that, yeah. Finding out one way or the other means we can’t say we don’t know anymore. And there’s a chance, maybe they are. Maybe they’ll be happy to see us. Maybe we’ll just talk to them once to find out they never want to see us again. Could go either way.”

_There’s no way it could go either way. There’s only one way._

“And don’t think we’ll go for it all of a sudden just because you came along,” he said sharply. “I’ll bring it up with Dru again, if that’ll make you happy, but we’re not rushing out and buying plane tickets the moment your train sets off.”

“If she gets mad, blame it on me. I brought it up, you were thinking about it, but it’s my fault you were thinking about it again.”

“Well. That’s all right, then,” he said, and things went back to being quiet.

At the station, she asked for a one-way ticket for the next train that’d take her to San Diego. It’d be arriving and leaving in a half-hour, which was fine by her. While she was busy getting her wallet out of her backpack, Spike stepped in front, almost slamming the cash down onto the countertop.

“I’ve got money,” she protested.

“It’s not the money, it’s the principle,” he told her. Then, making flirty eyes at the ticket agent, “Please, don’t listen to her. Let me be the one who takes care of this. I’ve got my pride on the line now.”

The agent didn’t laugh, but she smiled when she took Spike’s money instead of Dawn’s. Afterwards, when he hadn’t even let her buy herself a latte at the little bakery two blocks away, they made their way to a bench out by the tracks’ waiting area. She drank her coffee slowly and didn’t protest when he started smoking a cigarette. It wasn’t like there was anyone within thirty feet of them, and he’d picked a seat right next to a standing ashtray.

There were still almost twenty minutes to go. Twenty more minutes of Sunnydale early morning with the whole town behind her. Metaphorically, and soon to be literally.

“Jays,” he said all of a sudden, pointing at the bushes across the tracks. It took her a moment to spot them, and then, there they were, like they’d always been there.

“They’re good birds,” said Dawn. “They’re supposed to be smart, right?”

“Real smart. Smarter than some people I’ve known.” He took one last deep breath of smoke and stubbed out the butt. “From California. It’s what their name means, and –”

“Can you do me a favor?” She didn’t wait to find out if he would or not. “Call Buffy after the train leaves. You can do it from a phone here, or when you get back home, but call her. So she’ll know I’m coming before I get there.”

“I will, pigeon.”

After the train pulled in, after they’d hugged, she climbed up to the second level and settled into a window seat. Not at one of the little tables, even though those were roomier. She didn’t want to be sharing her space right now. She just wanted some time to think about where she was going on a bigger scale than their apartment, or back to San Diego. Picturing the future was a skill she’d lost when Mom got sick. But maybe now that she was dead, she could pick it up again, because it wasn’t like she was worrying about what was going to happen to her anymore.

It was the sort of joke she couldn’t share with _anyone_. Except maybe Buffy, Spike, and Dru.

When she got back, she’d share it with Buffy. And they’d both laugh, because they’d get what made it funny.

Dawn looked down and saw Spike, scanning the windows – then looking up and seeing her, and waving again. She waved back, and then waved good-bye. Curled herself up and leaned against the window, all the better to watch the gentle California scenery flow by. Sunnydale behind her, San Diego ahead, friends at her back, her sister soon to be waiting for her.

She’d say she was sorry first. First thing, before anything else. And then she’d talk to Buffy. Really talk to her like they hadn’t in what felt like years. She was ready, now. And she was looking forward to it.


	12. and it’s you when I go pick up the phone

I’ve taken to referring to the concept of this AU as “everyone’s human and the demons don’t matter” because the original choice of words was “the deaths don’t matter” – except they very much do. Typical, normal, mundane death is very much a thing that matters no matter what the universe. Buffy’s lost opportunity for an unremarkable life never came with a promise against all other losses she might have. As I thought on it, I came to realize that Joyce’s death would absolutely happen in more or less the same way as it did on the show. And I came to realize that I’d like to see Dawn’s grief when living in an ordinary world, with no ways to bring her mother back and no one around her she thought she could lean on. If that was the case, she’d absolutely run away to people she’d know she could lean on without thinking about those she’d left behind. Because in many ways, she’s always been an ordinary person trying to deal with the extraordinary things around her – sometimes demons, sometimes vampires, sometimes just the end of the world that is the death of someone she loved.

-

Thanks to [kelasparmak](https://kelasparmak.tumblr.com/) for catching my typos and sorting out the prose, [bonibaru](https://bonibaru.dreamwidth.org/) and [jacquez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquez/profile) for helping with pacing and rhythm, [petra](https://petra.dreamwidth.org/) and [tinsnip](https://tinsnip.tumblr.com/) for hand-holding, reassurance, and general accountability, [wolveswithhats](https://wolveswithhats.tumblr.com/) for encouraging me to begin in the first place, and again, to everyone who offered and suggested music.  


As with _Set Off Like Geese_ , all titles came from misheard lyrics. It was too good an idea to only use once.

_Sky Full of Song, Florence + The Machine_

_1\. Put It Down – Mike Doughty_  
_2\. Ready to Start – Arcade Fire_  
_3\. Mushaboom – Feist_  
_4\. Jackie and Wilson – Hozier_  
_5\. Portugal – Walk The Moon_  
_6\. (White Man In) Hammersmith Palais – The Clash_  
_7\. This Place Has Got No Soul, Kid – Voxtrot_  
_8\. Summer of ’69 – Bryan Adams_  
_9\. Johnny Appleseed – Dar Williams_  
_10\. Tomorrow – James_  
_11\. Want You Back – HAIM_  
_12\. Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own – U2_


End file.
